


Carry On

by totalnovaktrash



Series: The Melissa Series [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Asexual Character, Canon Compliant, Character Insert, Continuity Fixes, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Episode: s01e04 Phantom Traveler, Episode: s01e05 Bloody Mary, Episode: s01e09 Home, Episode: s01e12 Faith, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Melissa's got a secret, Oh My God, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rewrite, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, and Melissa calls him out on it, sass overload, there's going to be so much sass between the three of them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-01-16 15:49:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12345789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/totalnovaktrash/pseuds/totalnovaktrash
Summary: When Sam Winchester first met her, he knew a grand total of five things about Jessica Moore’s roommate, Melissa Burke. One, she had dark hair and striking blue eyes. Two, she only ever wore one outfit, a dark sweatshirt, a light tank top, and jeans. Three, she never took off her locket. Four, she planned to graduate with a major in computer science and minor in art practice. Five, she hated Sam.Neither Winchester ever thought that Melissa Burke would become their greatest ally.Also known as FIND WHAT KILLED MOM/KILL WHAT KILLED MOMRewrite of plot arc-based episodes in seasons one and two





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This series has an endgame of Destiel and Sabriel and seasons 12 and 13 are going to be a bit more AU than usual. Fair warning.

When Sam Winchester first met her, and he knew a grand total of five things about Jessica Moore’s roommate, Melissa Burke.

  1. She had dark hair and striking blue eyes.
  2. She only ever wore one outfit: a dark sweatshirt, a light tank top, and jeans.
  3. She never took off her locket.
  4. She planned to graduate with a major in computer science and minor in art practice.
  5. She hated Sam.



She was pleasant enough when Jess was around, but outside of the rare moments that both girls were seen in the same place when not hanging out with the rest of their friend group, Melissa avoided Sam like the plague. It took several months and a near death experience for Sam to figure out why.

He had spotted Melissa on her way back to the dorms from the library. She had been listening to music with headphones and hadn’t heard him approach. When he put his hand on her arm to get her attention, Sam found himself thrown violently against the wall of the nearest building with a knife at his throat.

“ _Damn it_ , Winchester!” Melissa hissed, stepping back and putting the knife away. “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that!”

“What was that?” Sam asked, staring at her in shock.

She rolled her eyes. “It’s called a knife, Sam. You’d think someone like you would recognize it.”

“Someone like me?”

“Oh, please,” she scoffed, “I had you pegged half a second after I saw you. I can smell the hunter lifestyle on you, Winchester.”

Sam blinked. “You’re a hunter?”

“I was until I came here. Now I’m a computer science major, just like you’re a law student.”

Sam headed back to Melissa and Jess’ dorm with her. Melissa told him how she had been raised by her fathers and her uncles, all four of them hunters, and Sam shared his story about him, Dean, and their Dad. After a while, he worked up the courage to ask a question that had been bugging him for a while. “The symbol on your locket,” he said, “it’s lore related?”

“It was a gift from one of my uncles,” Melissa explained, fingering the locket. “The symbol of the Trickster, Loki. It’s supposed to protect me from those who wish me harm.”

“And what’s supposed to protect you from Loki?”

Her hand dropped and curled into a fist. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “ _This_ is why I’ve been avoiding you.”

“What?”

She looked at him, eyes bright with her anger. “As similar as our families are, we were raised very differently, Sam. You were trained to kill first, ask questions never. I was raised on facts. A lot of the supernatural world needs killing, yes, but not all of it is evil.”

“How can you say that? Do you even know what these things have done?” Sam demanded, angrily.

“How dare you?” she spat. “Do _you_ even know _half_ of the lore necessary for hunting? Some of them are _people_ , Sam! Even the ones who aren’t don’t automatically deserve to die! A _demon_ once sacrificed his life for my family! And _Loki_ pretty much _died_ to ensure they would survive—!” Melissa took a deep breath. “There’s a difference between hunting and _homicide_.”

The two of them became close friends after that day, but they avoided the topic of hunting for months. It only came up again a while later at a party. Everyone had already passed out or gone to sleep, leaving Sam and Melissa the only ones still conscious. “Do you ever miss it?” Sam asked. “The hunting.”

“All the time,” she admitted. “I’d go back to it in a heartbeat.”

Melissa fell asleep before he did and Sam decided he wanted to know what was in her locket. He somehow managed to get the thing open without rousing Melissa and frowned at its contents. On one side was a drawing of himself wearing a t-shirt with a symbol Sam didn’t recognize… the other was a drawing of Dean wearing a trench coat.

As far as Sam knew, Melissa had never met Dean. But her drawing— and he knew it was hers, he could recognize her work anywhere— was spot on, even if Dean did look a decade or so older than he should.

Sam closed the locket and resolved to put the drawings out of his mind. It was just too weird.


	2. The Woman in White Part 1

“No, seriously. I'm proud of you. And you're gonna knock 'em dead on Monday and you're gonna get that full ride. I know it,” Jess said.

Sam smiled. “What would I do without you?”

“Crash and burn.” She grinned and pulled Sam in for a kiss that only lasted a moment before the two were pulled apart.

“Leave room for the rest of us, please! Asexual best friend, coming through!” Melissa announced, placing herself in between the two and punching Sam’s shoulder. “One seventy-four, huh? Not bad for someone like us.”

“You’re jealous and you know it,” Sam scoffed light-heartedly.

“In your dreams, Sammy-boy.”

After the party, Jess, Sam, and Melissa headed back to the apartment. Melissa had been crashing on the couch after a nasty disagreement with her new roommate. She had passed out almost immediately, exhausted, only to be woken up a few hours later by the sound of voices.

Melissa rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and made her way to the kitchen to see the source of the voices.

What she found was _not_ what she was expecting.

 _Dean Winchester_ was standing in the kitchen looking ridiculously young and eyeing Jessica with a look that Melissa recognized all too well. “I love the Smurfs. You know, I gotta tell you. You are completely out of my brother's league.”

“Just let me put something on,” Jess said, turning to go.

“No, no, no, I wouldn't dream of it. Seriously.”

Melissa snorted and stepped into sight. “He’s a douchewad. Why does that not surprise me?” she snarked.

Sam coughed. “Mel, this is Dean. Dean, my friend Melissa.”

“Pleasure,” Dean said, shooting her a grin.

Melissa made a face. “Don’t do that.”

“Anyway, I gotta borrow Sammy here, talk about some private family business. But, uh, nice meeting you two.”

“No,” Sam said, firmly. “Whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of them.”

Dean cleared his throat and looked straight at Sam. “Okay. Dad hasn't been home in a few days.”

Sam scoffed. “So he's working overtime on a Miller Time shift. He'll stumble back in sooner or later.”

Dean ducked his head and looked back up. “Dad's on a hunting trip. And he hasn't been home in a few days.”

Sam tried to be discreet when he glanced at Melissa to gage her reaction. She had gone pale, making her freckles stand out more, and her eyes had gone wide. Dean frowned, having noticed the interaction. “Jess, excuse us. We have to go outside.”

The younger Winchester put on a pair of jeans, grabbed a hoodie, and dragged both Melissa and Dean into the stairwell.

“Why’re we bringing her?” Dean asked.

“Rude,” Melissa snorted.

“Dean, you can't just break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you,” Sam said.

Dean shook his head. “You're not hearing me, Sammy. Dad's missing. I need you to help me find him.”

“You remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil's Gates in Clifton?” Sam reminded him. “He was missing then, too. He's always missing, and he's always fine.”

The elder brother glanced at Melissa again before responding. “Not for this long. Now are you gonna come with me or not?”

“I'm not. Take Mel.”

“ _Excuse me?_ ” Melissa demanded. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

Dean stared at him. “Take _her_?”

Sam ignored his brother, opting to respond to Melissa instead. “Just last month you were saying you’d go back to hunting ‘in a heartbeat.’”

“She’s a hunter?”

“I was talking about _real_ hunting, Sam. Not the cross-country killing spree that you Winchesters think passes for it!”

“Hey!” Dean shouted, snapping in front of the feuding friends’ faces to get their attention. “Why won’t you come, Sam?

Sam crossed his arms. “I swore I was done hunting. For good.”

Dean started down the stairs again, Sam and Melissa on his tail. “Come on. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad.”

“When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45.”

They stopped at the door to the outside. “Well, what was he supposed to do?”

“I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, don't be afraid of the dark.”

His brother snorted at that. “Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what's out there.”

“Yeah, I know, but still. The way we grew up, after Mom was killed, and Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her. But we still haven't found the damn thing. So we kill everything we can find. Mel is right, there’s a difference between hunting and homicide.”

Dean looked out the window. “We save a lot of people doing it, though.”

There was an awkward pause in which no one spoke. Sam was the one to break the silence. “You think Mom would have wanted this for us?”

Dean rolled his eyes and slammed the door open.

“The weapon training, and melting the silver into bullets?” Sam continued. “Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors.”

They crossed the parking lot to a black Impala. Neither brother heard the soft whimper that came from Melissa.

Dean was focused on his brother. “So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?”

“No. Not normal. Safe,” Sam corrected.

“And that's why you ran away.”

Melissa cocked her head to the side and looked at Sam, confused. He sighed. “I was just going to college. It was Dad who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing.”

“Yeah, well, Dad's in real trouble right now. If he's not dead already. I can feel it. I can't do this alone.”

“Mel will go with you. Right?”

Melissa swallowed hard, but nodded.

Dean spared her a quick glance before looking back at Sam. “Well, I want you.”

Sam let out a breath. “What was he hunting?”

Dean opened the trunk of the Impala, then the spare-tire compartment. Melissa whistled appreciatively. “Nice selection,” she complimented, referring to the arsenal of weapons.

“Thanks,” the hunter said, propping the compartment open with a shotgun and digging through the clutter. “All right, let's see, where the hell did I put that thing?”

“So when Dad left, why didn't you go with him?” Sam asked.

“I was working my own gig. This, uh, voodoo thing, down in New Orleans.”

Melissa winced. “Witches?” she guessed. Dean grunted his affirmative response. “Damn.”

Sam frowned. “Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?”

Dean looked back at him. “I'm twenty-six, dude.”

Melissa made a choking noise and, this time, Sam noticed. He shot her a questioning look, but she waved him off.

Dean pulled some papers out of a folder. “All right, here we go. So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy,” he handed one of the papers to Sam. “They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA.”

The paper was a printout of an article from the Jericho Herald, headlined ‘Centennial Highway Disappearance’ and dated Sept. 19th, 2005. It had a man's picture, captioned ‘Andrew Carey MISSING.’ Melissa read over Sam’s shoulder— or around it, since she wasn’t tall enough to read over it— and frowned.

“Not just a random kidnapping, I assume?”

“Nope,” Dean confirmed. “There was another one in April. And in December of ’04, ’03, ’98, ’92, ten of them over the past twenty years.” He took the article back and put it back in the folder, then pulled another bag out of the car. “All men, all the same five-mile stretch of road. It started happening more and more, so Dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. I hadn't heard from him since, which is bad enough. Then I get this voicemail yesterday.”

He held up a handheld tape recorder and pressed play. The recording was static-y and the signal was clearly breaking up.

“ _Dean...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger._ ”

Melissa broke into a smile. “My EVP senses are tingling,” she said in a sing song voice.

“Not bad,” Dean complimented. “I slowed the message down, I ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got.”

He pressed play again and a woman’s voice spoke. “ _I can never go home..._ ”

“Never go home,” Sam repeated.

“I’ve got a fifty that says she’s a ghost,” hummed Melissa.

“Yeah, I ain’t taking that bet.” Dean dropped the recorder, put down the shotgun, shuts the trunk, then leaned on it and addressed Sam again. “You know, in almost two years I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing.”

Sam looked at Melissa, who nodded encouragingly. He turned back to Dean. “All right. I'll go. I'll help you find him. But Mel comes too.”

Dean nodded. “If you’re a hunter, I’m assuming you can hold your own.”

Melissa snorted. “Taught by the best, raised with a knife in my hand. Bet I got better aim too.”

“That’s something I’m willing to bet on.”

“And I have to get back first thing Monday,” Sam added. “Just wait here.” He started back to the apartment.

“What's first thing Monday?” Dean called after him.

“I have an interview.”

“What, a job interview?” he scoffed. “Skip it.”

“It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate.”

The older brother smirked. “Law school?”

Sam gave him a look. “So we got a deal or not?”

Dean didn’t respond and Sam went to pack. The former finally turned his full attention to Melissa. “You don’t have to grab anything?”

“I’m resourceful.”

“You gotta be when you live like us,” he said. She snorted and Dean figured that was a pretty good segue to his question. “So what was all that earlier about ‘real hunting’ and hunting versus homicide?”

Melissa studied Dean for a few moments, choosing her words carefully before answering. “How long has your family been hunting for?”

“Twenty-two years,” was Dean’s automatic response.

“It started with your Dad, right? He wanted to avenge your Mom’s death and so he kills every non-human thing he catches wind of.” Melissa bit her lip. “But before that, the Winchesters were normal. You lived an apple pie life.”

Dean didn’t say anything, so Melissa continued. “My dad and my uncle have been hunting since before I was born. I was raised on bedtime stories of them killing bad guys, kicking ass, and taking names. Dad didn’t want me to have this life, but I begged him to teach me to hunt. I shot my first gun at age five, killed my first monster at ten. The monster was one of my aunts.

“Not every vampire or werewolf is inherently evil. Almost everything you’ve ever killed was a human being at some point. Hunters like you and your father have the ‘mercy is a luxury we can’t afford’ mentality, but the fact of the matter is that mercy is a luxury you have to budget for. You can’t just kill with no regard for who’s going to be affected by the death, that’s homicide. You have to kill the ones who are beyond redemption, the ones who slaughter humans because they _can_ , the ones who aren’t good people at heart, the ones whose death would save more people than it would harm. _That’s_ hunting.”

Dean huffed. “Who told you that?”

Melissa looked at him with a strange expression. “My parents did.”

* * *

Dean walked out of the gas station with candy, chips, and soda. Sam was sitting shotgun with the door open, rifling through a box of tapes, and Melissa was in the back seat, singing along with the music.

“Hey!” Dean called. “You want breakfast?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “No, thanks.”

“Suit yourself, Sam. Half that bag is mine!” Melissa insisted.

“So how'd you pay for that stuff? You and Dad still running credit card scams?

Dean put the gas nozzle back on the pump. “Yeah, well, hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career. Besides, all we do is apply. It's not our fault they send us the cards.”

Sam swung his legs back inside the car and closed the door. “Yeah? And what names did you write on the application this time?”

“Uh, Burt Aframian and his son Hector. Scored two cards out of the deal.” Dean got in the car closed the door.

“Worst aliases ever,” Melissa scoffed. “How can you pull off being a Hector?”

Sam hummed in agreement. “And seriously man, you've gotta update your cassette tape collection.”

“Why?

“Well, for one, they're cassette tapes. And two,” Sam held up a tape for every band he named. “Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica? It's the greatest hits of mullet rock.”

Melissa laughed. “Oh, you did not just insult Metallica.”

Sam twisted in his seat to look at her. “You listen to that crap?”

“I was raised on ‘that crap’, Samster. AC/DC lullabies and all.”

“Really?”

She shrugged. “That’s what happens when you grow up in the back seat of a car. Them’s the rules. Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts their cakehole.”

Dean snatched a tape labeled AC/DC from the box on Sam’s lap. “She clearly knows what she’s talking about, Sammy.” He popped the tape in the player and started the engine.

“You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old,” Sam said as _Back in Black_ started to play. “It's Sam, okay?”

“Sorry, I can't hear you, the music's too loud!”

Melissa snickered and she and Dean belted the lyrics along with the music as they drove off.


	3. The Woman in White Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm a week late. Unfortunately both Darkel and I had midterms. I'll try to post the next chapter before next week to make up for it, I promise!

Since Dean didn’t have a fake ID for her, Melissa stayed in the car on the phone while Sam and Dean talked to the police on the bridge.

“There’s no one matching John’s description at the hospital or morgue,” she reported when the brothers got back in the car.

“That’s something,” Sam sighed.

“So what’d you get from the local brass?”

Dean started the car and they drove off. “This one’s name was Troy, a kid dating the Deputy’s daughter. They haven’t found any connections to the others.”

Melissa took a second to mull over the information. “Where we going now?”

“Downtown,” Sam answered. “Amy, the girlfriend, is putting up flyers.”

The female hunter sat back in her seat as they drove the short distance to downtown Jericho, studying the brothers in the front seat. Sam had called her out the night before, he did miss hunting, _a lot_. But she had left home for a reason, running off with the Winchesters was not in the cards if she wanted to avoid hunters’ drama.

She sighed. She could decide what to do when Dean took Sam back to Stanford.

Melissa had been the one to spot Amy Hein. Dean had introduced himself and Sam as Troy’s uncles and Melissa as Sam’s fiancée— both Melissa and Sam hit the elder Winchester when Amy’s back was turned— and the four of them and Amy’s friend, Rachel, headed to the diner.

“I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and... he never did.”

“He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?” Sam asked.

Amy shook her head. “No, nothing I can remember.”

“I like your necklace,” Melissa complimented.

Amy was holding the pendant she was wearing, a pentagram in a circle, and looked down at it. “Troy gave it to me. Mostly to scare my parents with all that devil stuff.”

Sam and Melissa chuckled. Dean looked over at them.

“It means just the opposite, actually,” Melissa explained. “A pentagram is protection against evil.”

“Really powerful,” Sam added. Then, seeing Dean’s expression, he amended, “I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing.”

“Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries,” Dean said, taking his arm off the back of Sam’s seat and leaning forward. “Here's the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something's not right. So if you've heard anything...”

Amy and Rachel looked at each other.

“What is it?” Melissa pressed.

“Well, it's just...” Rachel began. “I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk.”

“What do they talk about?” the brothers asked in unison

“It's kind of this local legend. This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago. Well, supposedly she's still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever.”

* * *

The trio spent the rest of the day researching at the library. Dean was at the computer searching for articles about the death of their ghost. ‘Female Murder Hitchhiking’ yields no options. He replaced ‘Hitchhiking’ with ‘Centennial Highway’ and gets the same result.

“Let me try,” Sam offered, reaching for the mouse.

Dean smacked his hand. “I got it.”

Melissa and Sam share a look. The former smirks and pull’s Dean’s chair away from the computer while Sam slides over to take his place.

“Dude!” Dean protested, moving his chair back so he could hit Sam in the shoulder. “Control freaks.”

Melissa leaned in between the two brothers. “Angry spirits are born out of violent deaths.”

“So?”

“Well, maybe it's not murder,” Sam reasoned. He replaced ‘Murder’ with ‘Suicide’ in the search bar. The data base spits out an article entitled _Suicide on Centennial_ , dated April 25, 1981. “This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river.”

“Does it say why she did it?” Dean asked.

“Yeah. An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die.”

The article had a picture of a man next to a picture of Sylvania Bridge, the place where the police had found Troy’s car.

"'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch," Melissa read out loud. “The bridge look familiar to you boys?”

Dean drove them out to Sylvania Bridge. By the time they reached their destination, it wat pitch dark out. The three hunters walked along the bridge, then stopped to lean on the railing and look down at the river.

“So this is where Constance took the swan dive,” Dean said.

“You think Dad would have been here?” Sam wondered, looking at his brother.

“Well, he's chasing the same story and we're chasing him.”

Dean continued walking, the other two followed.

“Where do we go from here?” Melissa asked.

“We keep digging until we find him. Might take a while.”

Sam stopped walking. “Dean, I told you, I've gotta get back by—”

“Monday.” Dean turns around. “Monday. Right. The interview. You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?”

“Maybe. Why not?”

Melissa gritted her teeth and looked out over the water, trying to tune out the Winchesters’ conversation. She had never been against Sam and Jess’ relationship, but she had kept the fact that she knew it would never last to herself. Hearing Sam talk about it like it would with such conviction…

“Even if we do find the thing that killed her,” Sam was saying, “Mom's gone. And she isn't coming back.”

Dean grabbed Sam by the collar and shoved him up against the railing of the bridge. “Don't talk about her like that.”

Melissa opened her mouth to snap at the two to stop being jackasses when she spotted a woman in a white dress standing on the edge of the bridge. “Guys,” she hissed.

Dean let go of his brother when he saw the woman, Constance Welch, look over at them and then step forward off the edge. They ran to the railing and looked over.

“Where'd she go?”

“Freaking spirits.” Melissa swore. “She could be anywhere.”

Behind them, the Impala's engine started and its headlights turned on. “What the—”

“Dean,” said Sam. “Who's driving your car?”

Dean pulls the keys out of his pocket and Melissa groaned. “Freaking spirits.”

The car jerks into motion, heading straight for them. They turned and ran.

The car was moving faster than they were and was gaining fast. Melissa mentally cursed the Winchester’s ignorance and prepared herself to do something very stupid. “Sam, jump!” she shouted and grabbed Dean’s wrist.

Dean looked over at her like she was insane. For a moment, the world blurred and there was a _whooshing_ sound in his ears. Next thing he knew, he was dangling over the water and the only thing stopping him from falling was Melissa’s grip on his wrist. “What the hell?” he shouted.

“I’ve got you!” she yelled back. “Don’t worry!”

Sam had caught himself on the edge of the bridge and pulled himself back up. Melissa hauled Dean back onto the pavement and swung up behind him. “Freaking spirits,” she spat for the third time.

“That’s some grip,” Sam commented.

Melissa laughed. “I keep telling you Samchester, I could beat you in an arm wrestle.”

“And I keep telling you, I’d break your wrist.”

Dean had gone over to check out the Impala, but when he opened the hood, a gust of strong wind blew him back over the edge of the bridge and into the water below.

The two ran to peer over the edge. “Dean?” Sam shouted. “Dean!”

Below, a mud covered and annoyed Dean crawled out of the water and into the grass, gasping for air.

“What?” he shouted back up to them.

Melissa was trying not to laugh. “Are you all right?”

Dean holds up one hand in an ‘ok’ sign. “I'm super.”

By the time they were back on the road, the younger two had dissolved into giggles. Dean was alternating between looking at the road, glaring at Sam, and glaring at Melissa in the rearview mirror. “Cut it out.”

“You smell like a toilet,” Sam said.

“What I want to know is how you managed not to drop me,” Dean looked back at Melissa. “For that matter, how did we end up over the edge?”

Melissa reached back and rubbed a spot on her shoulder blade. “I’m stronger than I look, Dean. And I can be very fast when I want to.”

“She’s right,” Sam agreed. “You should see her sprint sometime.”

Dean seemed to accept the explanation and when he looked away, she relaxed. “I think I saw a motel nearby.”

* * *

The man at the desk in the motel had recognized the name on Dean’s card and pointed the trio to the room John had bought out for the month. Sam picked the lock and pulled Dean and Melissa inside the room.

Papers were pinned to every inch of the walls. Maps, newspaper clippings, pictures, notes, everything. Books were stacked across the desk and junk was scattered on the floor and bed. “Whoa,” Sam breathed.

Melissa nodded, looking around the room wide-eyed. “You’re telling me.”

Dean turned on a light by the bed and sniffed a half-eaten burger. He gagged. “I don't think he's been here for a couple days at least.”

Sam studied the salt on the floor and looked up. “Salt, cats-eye shells... he was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in.”

Melissa tapped the pentagram above the bed. “You’re dad must’ve been in some deep crap, man.”

Dean moved to look at the papers covering one wall.

“What have you got there?” Sam asked.

“Centennial Highway victims,” Dean said. “I don't get it. I mean, different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?

Sam looks at the papers taped to the other walls. There's something about the Bell Witch, two people being burned alive, a skeletal person blowing a horn at several scared people with the note ‘MORTIS DANSE’, a column about ‘Devils and Demons’, another about ‘Sirens, Witches, the possessed.’

“Here’s your answer.”

Both Winchester’s turn to look at Melissa who’s standing in front of the same article they had found with a note that reads—

“Woman in white.”

Dean whistled and looked back at the photos of Constance’s victims. “You sly dogs. All right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it.”

“She might have another weakness,” Sam reminded him.

“Well, Dad would want to make sure. He'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?”

“No, not that I can tell.”

“Tell you what, though,” Melissa said, tilting her head to the side and squinting at the article. “If I were John Winchester, I'd go ask her husband.”

“If he's still alive.”

“Probably is. Should only be sixty something.”

“All right. Why don't you, uh, see if you can find an address, I'm gonna get cleaned up.” Dean started towards the bathroom.

Sam cleared his throat. “Hey, Dean? What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry.”

Dean held up a hand. “No chick-flick moments.”

The younger brother chuckled. “All right. Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

“Ass,” Melissa mumbled to herself with a small smile, finishing the insult in her head.

Dean disappeared into the bathroom.

“Hey, Sam.” Melissa help up an old photo of John sitting on the hood of the Impala with a young Sam, next to a young Dean wearing a baseball cap. Sam took the photo from her and held it, smiling sadly. “Dontcha think baby Dean looks kind of like me?”

Sam squinted at the photo and laughed. “Yeah, he kind of does.

By the time Dean was out of the shower, Melissa had flopped onto the bed to flip through one of John’s lore books and Sam was pacing while listening to a voicemail

Dean grabbed his jacket. “Hey, I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?”

“No,” Sam said.

“Aframian's buying. No? Melissa?” Dean asked the third member of their party. Melissa was to engrossed in the lore to hear him. Dean shook his head. “Nerds.”

Melissa expected Dean to be gone for a while, maybe come back with some left over pie she could swipe, but looked up when Sam stood suddenly with his cell to his ear. “What about you?”

Sam pulled the phone away and looked at it, horrified.

“What?” Melissa asked.

“Five-oh,” was Sam’s response. “We’ve got to get out of here.”


	4. The Woman in White Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately, I overestimated the amount of time I have to write and Darkel has to beta, so we'll be updating every other week until further notice. So sorry, guys!

Sam, Melissa, and Joseph walked down the driveway, Joseph holding the photo Melissa had found on John’s motel room mirror.

“Yeah, he was older, but that's him,” Joseph confirmed, handing the picture back to Sam. “He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter.”

“That's right,” Sam said. “We're working on a story together.”

The older man scoffed. “Well, I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on. The questions he asked me?”

“About your wife Constance?” Melissa said.

“He asked me where she was buried.”

“And where is that again?

Joseph looked at her. “What, I gotta go through this twice?”

“It's fact-checking,” Sam placated. “If you don't mind.”

The man sighed.  “In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge.”

“And why did you move?”

“I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died,” he snapped.

Sam and Joseph stopped walking. “Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?” the former asked.

“No way,” was the immediate response. “Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known.”

“So you had a happy marriage?”

There was a hesitation before the next answer. “Definitely.”

“Well, that should do it. Thanks for your time.” Sam turned toward the Impala. After a moment of thought, he looked back up at Joseph. “Mr. Welch, did you ever hear of a woman in white?”

Joseph turned around. “A what?”

“A woman in white. Or sometimes weeping woman?” When the other man didn’t respond, Sam continued. “It's a ghost story. Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really. Um, they're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places, in Hawaii, Mexico, lately in Arizona, Indiana. All these are different women. You understand. But all share the same story.”

Joseph had to look up at Sam to look him in the eye. “Boy, I don't care much for nonsense.” He started to walk away, but Sam followed him.

“See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them. And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children. Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again.”

“You think...you think that has something to do with...Constance? You smartass!”

“You tell me.”

The man was almost shaking with anger or grief, Sam couldn’t tell. “I mean, maybe...maybe I made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children. Now, you get the hell out of here! And you don't come back!”

It wasn’t until Sam had gotten back in the car that he noticed Melissa had disappeared.

* * *

“I don't know how many times I gotta tell you. It's my high school locker combo,” Dean insisted.

“We gonna do this all night long?” the Sheriff demanded.

There was a knock on the door and Melissa poked her head in. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, confidence oozing from her voice, “the deputy was looking for you? Said there were shots fired over at Whiteford Road.”

Dean was glad that the sheriff had taken his eyes off him because it took him a moment to hide the look of shock that crossed his face. He managed to school his expression before the man looked back at him. “You have to go to the bathroom?”

“No.”

“Good.” The sheriff handcuffed Dean to the table and left.

Dean scowled. “You and Sam were supposed to run, not put your asses on the line to get me out of here.”

Melissa rolled her eyes. “You’re welcome, douchebag.” She pulled a paperclip from the journal on the table and picked the locks on Dean’s handcuffs. “Stay in that seat,” she said moving so that she could watch the police through the window on the door without being caught.

She waited until she was sure that the coast was clear before pushing the door open slightly and motioning for Dean to follow. They climbed down the fire escape, Dean carrying the journal. 

“Alright, first things first—” Dean said.

“Transportation,” Melissa agreed, pulling Dean’s cell phone out of her pocket and tossing it to him. “I’ll get us a car.”

Dean dialed Sam’s number and waited for him to answer. “Fake 911 phone call? Sammy, I don't know, that's pretty illegal.”

“ _What are you talking about?_ ”

“They only left me alone because you called in about hearing gunshots?”

“ _Wasn’t me, must’ve been Mel. Is she with you?_ ”

“Yeah. Listen, we gotta talk.”

“ _Tell me about it. So the husband was unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been Dad's next stop._ ”

Dean frowned. “Sammy, would you shut up for a second?”

“ _I just can't figure out why Dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet._ ”

“Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho.”

Dean glanced at Melissa who had poked her head out of the car she was hotwiring. He waved at her to stop eavesdropping and keep working.

“ _What? How do you know?_ ”

“I've got his journal.”

Sam was silent for a moment. “ _He doesn't go anywhere without that thing._ ”

“Yeah, well, he did this time.”

“ _What's it say?_ ”

Dean sighed. “Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going.”

“Coordinates, then?” Dean jumped when he realized Melissa had finished on the car and joined him. “Where to?”

“I'm not sure yet.”

“ _I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that Dad would just skip out in the middle of a job? Dean, what the hell is going on? Whoa!_ ”

There was the sound of tires screeching and the line went dead. “Sam? Sam!”

Dean looked at the car Melissa had been working on, then at the young woman. She held up a car key. “They left the keys in the cup holder. How well do you take directions?”

* * *

Sam pulled the car up to the front of Constance's house and stopped. The engine shut off and so did the lights. “Don't do this,” Sam said to the spirit in the backseat.

Constance flickered. “I can never go home,” she lamented.

“You're scared to go home,” Sam guessed. He looked back, but Constance wasn't there. He glanced around and found her in the shotgun seat. She climbed into his lap, shoving him back against the seat.

“Hold me. I'm so cold.”

“You can't kill me,” Sam said. “I'm not unfaithful. I've never been!”

“You will be. Just hold me.”

Constance kissed Sam as he continued to struggle, reaching for the keys. She pulled back and disappeared. Sam shouted in pain and yanked his hoodie open. There were five holes burned through the fabric, matching to Constance’s fingers. She flickered in front of him, reaching into his chest.

Sam could faintly hear a shout of, “Shoot the window!”

“Are you insane?”

“Distract the damn ghost, Dean!”

A gunshot went off, shattering the window and startling Constance. Dean approached, still firing at her. She glares at him and vanished, but reappeared almost immediately. Sam saw Melissa dig something out of her the pocket of her sweatshirt and chuck at the ghost.

Constance shouted when the object made contact and disappeared again.

Sam shook his head and turned the car back on to drive it into the house.

Dean stared at the car. “What the hell is he doing? Sam!” They ran into the house to the passenger side of the car. “Sam!”

“Here!”

“You okay?” Melissa asked, worriedly.

“I think.”

“Can you move?” Dean questioned.

“Yeah. Help me?”

Dean leaned through the window to give Sam a hand and helped him out of the car.

Melissa turned around to study the empty house. She spotted Constance and the dresser moving towards them. “Dean!”

The brothers turned around, but the three of them were pinned against the car by the dresser.

The lights started to flicker and water began to pour down the staircase. Constance turned to look, scared, and went over to the foot of the stairs.

“You've come home to us, Mommy,” two distinctly childlike voices said.

Suddenly the two children appeared behind her and wrapped their arms around their torso. Constance screamed, her image flickering as she and the two children melted into a puddle in the floor. Sam, Dean, and Melissa shoved the dresser over and went to look at the spot where Constance and her children vanished.

“So this is where she drowned her kids,” Dean guessed.

Sam nodded. “That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them.”

“You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy.” Dean slapped Sam on the chest where he'd been injured and walked back to the car. Sam laughed through the pain. Melissa shot him a worried look, but Sam waved her off. “Yeah, I wish I could say the same for you. What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak?”

“Hey. Saved your ass. You always carry an iron ball in your pocket, Melissa?”

“Boy scout 101, Dean. Always be prepared.”

Dean leaned over to look at the car. “I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car, I'll kill you.”

They managed to get the car out of the house and back onto the road. Sam was sitting shotgun and had the journal open to a page that read "DEAN 35-111" and a map open on his lap, working to find the coordinates with a ruler, a flashlight tucked between chin and shoulder.

“Okay, here's where Dad went. It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado.”

Dean nodded. “Sounds charming. How far?”

“About six hundred miles.”

“Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning.”

Sam looked at him, hesitating. “Dean, I, um...”

“You're not going.”

“The interview's in like, ten hours. I gotta be there.”

Dean, the picture of disappointment, returned his attention to the road. “Yeah. Yeah, whatever. I'll take you and Melissa home.”

Melissa bit her lip, not wanting to break the silence and stayed quiet for the rest of the ride back to Sam’s apartment building. As they pulled up to the front of the apartment, Dean was still frowning. Sam got out of the car and leaned through the window.

“Call me if you find him?”

Dean nodded but didn’t say anything.

“And maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?”

“Yeah, all right.”

Sam noticed that Melissa hasn’t gotten out of the backseat and looked at her. “You coming, Mel?”

Melissa shook her head and forced a smile. “Nah, Dean can take me back. After this hunt, no nympho roommate’s going scare me out of my own apartment.”

The younger brother laughed. “See you then.” He patted the car door twice and turned away.

Dean leaned toward the passenger door to call after him. “Sam?”

Sam looked back.

“You know, we made a hell of a team back there.”

“Yeah.”

Dean drove off, pulling out of the parking lot. “So where am I taking you?”

Melissa stayed silent for a moment, contemplating how to respond. As little as she wanted to be around Dean, she knew she had been pulled into this for a reason.

“I once asked my uncle why my parents kept hunting after I was born,” she decided to say. “He told me that hunting isn’t just a lifestyle, it can be a drug. Some people can quit cold turkey and move on with their lives, only ever seeing the darkness of our world in their nightmares. Some people can indulge in a hunt every once and while and live a sober, normal life in between.

“And some people are addicts, addicted to the adrenaline from a kill or the dopamine from saving a life or maybe they just don’t know how to do anything else. They don’t get apple pie lives when they go sober, they just get a life that feels like one massive lie.”

The meaning of her speech became clear to Dean. “You’re not coming—”

She cut him off. “You and Sam, you think you can do this alone. I don’t doubt your skill, Dean, but no one should have to do this alone. Believe me, I want to stick around as much as you want me here. But Sam wanted me to go with you.

“Someone needs to keep an eye on him here,” Dean argued.

“Sam’s fine, he’s got…” Melissa’s voice trailed off as her eyes widened in horror. “Turn the car around.”

“What?”

“Dean, turn the car around right now!”

He complied. “What’s wrong.”

Melissa squeezed her eyes shut. “There was someone in the window. It wasn’t Jess.”

* * *

Dean kicked the front door open. “Sam!” he yelled, Melissa brushing past him and running towards the source of Sam’s screams.

“Jess! No!”

Melissa and Dean burst into the bedroom. Sam was on the bed, shielding himself from the sight of Jess in flames on the ceiling. Melissa was frozen gaping at the sight before her.

Dean grabbed Sam off the bed and bodily shoved him out the door, Sam struggling and still shouting, “Jess! Jess! No!”

Melissa shook herself out of her shock and pulled the two brothers out to the stairs and out of the building before the whole apartment went up in flames.

By the time the fire department showed up at the police had arrived, the three were at the other end of the parking lot. Dean watched them work for a moment before, turning and walking back to the Impala. Sam tossed a loaded shotgun into the trunk, face set in a mask of desperate anger.

Melissa, who had been leaning against the car with her eyes closed, looked over at Sam. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sam lied, not noticing her wince at his words. “You don’t have to come with, you know.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Melissa scoffed. “You think I’m letting you run off to hunt without me? Not a damn chance. You’re stuck with me, Winchester, like it or not.”

“Alright, then. It looks like we’ve got work to do.” Sam shut the trunk.


	5. Demon in the Plane Part 1

In the next few weeks, Melissa settles herself back into the hunting lifestyle with relative ease. But she was still often caught off guard about how different hunting with Sam and Dean was than when her parents would allow her to join on their hunts with her brother. She glanced up from her book to look over at the man passed out one of the beds. Dean hadn’t been too thrilled about Sam bringing her along. That was fine, it’s not like she wanted to be around the hunter either. The smallest things about the older Winchester would bother the hell out of Melissa and she hated it.

The door to the motel room opened and so did Dean’s eyes. Melissa looked back down at her book as the hunter’s hand slipped under the pillow to grab the weapon hidden there.

“Morning, sunshine,” said Sam, carrying coffee and doughnuts.

“Sam Winchester, my freaking hero!” Melissa declared, launching off the couch and nabbing the doughnuts.

“What time is it?” Dean asked.

“Uh, it's about five forty-five.”

“In the morning? Where does the day go?” Dean groaned, sitting up. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

Sam sat on the bed across from Dean. “Yeah, I grabbed a couple hours.”

“Liar,” Melissa accused around a mouthful of doughnut. “I was up at three, and you were watching a George Foreman infomercial.”

Dean glared at Sam, who shrugged. “Hey, what can I say? It's riveting TV.”

“When was the last time you got a good night's sleep?”

“I don't know, a little while, I guess. It's not a big deal.”

“Yeah, Sam, it is,” Dean argued.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Look, I appreciate your concern—”

“Oh, I'm not concerned about you. It's your job to keep my ass alive, so I need you sharp.”

Sam shrugged. “Mel can watch your back just fine. You should’ve seen her during finals, she runs off two hours maximum.”

“I’m not the best role model when it comes to good sleeping schedules, Sam,” Melissa pointed out.

“Seriously,” Dean said, “are you still having nightmares about Jess?”

Sam handed one of the coffees to Dean and one to Melissa. “Yeah. But it's not just her. It's everything. I just forgot, you know? This job. Man, it gets to you.”

“You can't let it. You can't bring it home like that.”

“So, what? All this it...never keeps you up at night?”

Dean shook his head and Melissa snorted. “That’s healthy.”

“You're never afraid?” Sam asked, skeptically.

“No, not really,” Dean denied.

The younger brother reached under the pillow Dean had been sleeping on to pull out a large hunting knife. Melissa cocked her head to the side, she had been expecting a gun.

Dean snatched the knife back. “That's not fear. That is precaution.”

“All right, whatever,” Sam sighed. “I'm too tired to argue.”

Dean’s phone rang. “Hello?”

Melissa took the chance to go back to her book.

“Job?” Sam asked once Dean hung up the phone.

“Kittanning, Pennsylvania,” Dean said, standing up. “Let’s get everything together and get on the road.”

* * *

“Thanks for making the trip so quick,” Jerry Panowski said, leading the three through the hangar. “I ought to be doing you guys a favor, not the other way around. Dean and John really helped me out.”

“Yeah, he told us,” Sam said. “It was a poltergeist?

“ _Poltergeist_?” a passing man repeated. “Man, I loved that movie.”

“Hey, nobody's talking to you. Keep walking,” Jerry told the man off. “Damn right it was a poltergeist, practically tore our house apart. Tell you something, if it wasn't for you and your dad, I probably wouldn't be alive. Your dad said you were off at college. Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s where I met Mel,” Sam confirmed. Melissa gave the man a little wave. “We’re… taking some time off.”

“Well, he was real proud of you,” Jerry told Sam. “I could tell. He talked about you all the time.”

Sam frowned, looking surprised by that. “He did?”

“Yeah, you bet he did. Oh, hey, you know I tried to get a hold of him, but I couldn't. How's he doing, anyway?”

“He's, um, wrapped up in a job right now,” Dean replied.

“Well, we're missing the old man, but we get Sam and a bonus partner. Even trade, huh?”

Dean laughs.

“No, not by a long shot.” Sam smiled.

“Speak for yourself, Sammy,” Melissa said, elbowing the taller hunter.

“I got something I want you guys to hear.” Jerry led the three into his office and put a CD in a drive. “I listened to this. And, well, it sounded like it was up your alley. Normally I wouldn't have access to this. It's the cockpit voice recorder for United Britannia flight 2485. It was one of ours.”

“ _Mayday! Mayday! Repeat! This is United Britannia 2485—immediate instruction help! United Britannia 2485, I copy your message—May be experiencing some mechanical failure..._ ” There is a loud, creepy whooshing sound. The three hunters exchanged looks. EVP.

“Took off from here, crashed about two hundred miles south. Now, they're saying mechanical failure. Cabin depressurized somehow. Nobody knows why. Over a hundred people on board. Only seven got out alive. Pilot was one. His name is Chuck Lambert. He's a good friend of mine. Chuck is, uh...well, he's pretty broken up about it. Like it was his fault.”

“You don't think it was?” Sam guessed.

“No, I don't.”

“Jerry, we're gonna need passenger manifests.”

“And a list of survivors,” Melissa added.

“And, uh, any way we can take a look at the wreckage?” Dean asked.

Jerry frowned. “The other stuff is no problem. But the wreckage... fellas, the NTSB has it locked down in an evidence warehouse. No way I've got that kind of clearance.”

Dean shrugged. “No problem.”

From there, they headed to a Copy Jack, Sam and Melissa waiting by the car outside while Dean made new IDs.

“Eventually someone’s going to recognize the names,” Melissa was arguing. “I just think it’s not a great idea to use actual famous people’s names for aliases.”

“Alright, well how does the Burke family choose their names?”

“We’ve all got a favorite we normally use. For IDs, we’ve got a list of names that we’ve googled the hell out of to make sure they’re not names someone could recognize.”

“What’s your favorite one?” Sam asked.

Melissa smirked. “Joanna di Angelo.”

Dean came back out with three IDs in his hand.

“You've been in there forever,” Sam complained.

Dean tossed one of the ID’s to Sam and the other to Melissa. “You can't rush perfection.”

“Homeland Security? That's pretty illegal, even for us.”

“Yeah, well, it's something new. You know? People haven't seen it a thousand times.” They got in the car. All right, so, what do we got?”

“There’s definitely EVP on the cockpit voice recorder,” Melissa confirmed, handing the laptop to Sam.

He played the recording, which they had edited to pull out a scratchy voice. “ _No survivors!_ ”

Dean frowned. “‘No survivors’? What's that supposed to mean? There were seven survivors.”

Sam shrugged. “Got me.”

“So, what have we got? A haunted flight?”

“That’s one possibility,” Melissa agreed. “There's a long history of spirits and death omens on planes and ships, like phantom travelers.”

“Or remember flight 401?” Sam offered.

“Right.” Dean nodded. “The one that crashed, the airline salvaged some of its parts, put it in other planes, then the spirit of the pilot and copilot haunted those flights.”

“Exactly. So, maybe we got a similar deal.”

“All right, so, survivors, which one do you want to talk to first?”

“Third on the list: Max Jaffey.”

“Why him?”

“We spoke to his mother,” Melissa explained. “Apparently Mr. Jaffey checked himself into Riverfront Psychiatric. He’s out best bet for someone having seen something that could help.”

Max had apparently decided to deny anything weird had happened, they discovered while walking with him in the hospital’s garden. Melissa could feel the impatience radiating off of Dean. “Mr. Joffey—”

“Jaffey,” Max corrected.

“Jaffey. You checked yourself in here, right?”

Max nodded in confirmation.

“Can I ask why?”

The man glared at Dean. “I was a little stressed. I survived a plane crash.”

“Uh huh. And that's what terrified you? That's what you were afraid of? See, I think maybe you did see something up there. We need to know what.”

“No. No, I was...delusional. Seeing things.”

Dean glanced at Sam and Melissa. “He was seeing things.”

“It's okay,” Sam said. “Then just tell us what you  _thought_  you saw, please.”

Max sighed. “There was... this man. And, uh, he had these... eyes. These, uh... black eyes. And I saw him, or I  _thought_  I saw him...”

“What?” Dean pressed, ignoring the way Melissa tensed at the description.

“He opened the emergency exit,” Max admitted. “But that's... that's impossible, right? I mean, I looked it up. There's something like two tons of pressure on that door.”

“I, uh, left my phone in the car,” Melissa mumbled abruptly, turning around and walking back inside.

Sam and Dean finished questioning Max and returned to the Impala to find Melissa pacing irritably outside the car. She didn’t join the two in questioning Mrs. Phelps, electing to stay in the backseat, typing away furiously on her laptop.

“Anything?” she asked when they got back in the car.

Sam shook his head. “Just that he was a nervous flyer. It doesn't make any sense.”

“A middle-aged dentist with an ulcer is not exactly evil personified.” Dean started the car. “You know what we need to do is get inside that NTSB warehouse, check out the wreckage.”

“Okay,” Sam allowed. “But if we're gonna go that route, we'd better look the part.”

Melissa snapped her laptop shut. “Oh hell no. You are not getting me in a pencil skirt again, Sam Winchester.”

Dean looked at her, then at his brother, intrigued. “Again?”

“I think I might know what we’re dealing with, but I want to make sure. Drop me off at the library and I’ll meet you two back at Jerry’s office.”

* * *

Sam and Dean gave Jerry the residue they had found on the door handle and he examined it through a microscope.

“I’ll save you the trouble,” Melissa said from the doorway. “It’s sulfur.”

“She’s right,” Jerry confirmed.

“You sure?” Sam asked.

“Take a look for yourself.” There was a commotion outside the office. “If you will excuse me, I have an idiot to fire.”

Jerry left, and Dean went over and looked into the microscope. “You know, there's not too many things that leave behind a sulfuric residue.”

“You were thinking demonic possession?” Sam asked Melissa.

She nodded. “The black eyes gave it away. It’s not uncommon for the eyes of the meatsuit to flash black.”

“Meatsuit?” Sam repeated.

Melissa waved a hand, dismissively. “It’s a term for a human acting as a vessel of a demon.”

“Demonic possession would explain how a mortal man would have the strength to open up an emergency hatch,” Dean said. “But this goes way beyond floating over a bed or barfing pea soup. I mean it's one thing to possess a person, but to use them to take down an entire airplane?”

Sam let out a long breath. “You ever heard of something like this before?”

Dean shook his head. Melissa didn’t answer, she just looked away.

They went back to their motel room and Sam and Dean went into full-on research mode while Melissa paced the length of the room. “Every religion in every world culture has the concept of demons and demonic possession. Judeo-Christian, Native American, Hindu, you name it.”

“Yeah, but none of them describe anything like this,” Dean said, flipping a page in the lore book he was reading.

“Well, that's not exactly true,” Sam corrected. “You see according to Japanese beliefs, certain demons are behind certain disasters, both natural and man-made. One causes earthquakes, another causes disease.”

“And this one causes plane crashes?” Dean got up. “All right, so, what? We have a demon that's evolved with the times and found a way to ratchet up the body count?”

“Yeah. You know, who knows how many planes it's brought down before this one?” Sam said. Dean snorted, turning away. “What?”

“I don't know, man. This isn't our normal gig. I mean, demons, they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. This is big”

Melissa frowned at him. “What, have you never done a demon hunt before?”

Sam and Dean looked at each other, then back at Melissa. “They’re not exactly common.”

She opened her mouth to argue but was cut off by Dean’s phone ringing.

“Hello?” Dean’s face fell as the conversation went on and Melissa’s stomach dropped. _No survivors,_ the demon had said on the recording. She had a feeling that one of the seven people who had walked away from the crash had been taken out.

“Jerry, hang in there, alright? We'll catch up with you soon.” Dean hung up.

“Another crash?” Melissa guessed.

“Yeah. Let's go.”

“Where to?” asked Sam.

“Nazareth.”

They stopped by the crash site. EMF was highest by the remains of the cockpit where Sam scrapped what was most likely sulfuric residue off of the controls. Back in Jerry’s office, the residue was put under the microscope.

“Sulfur?” Dean guessed.

Jerry nodded.

“Well, that's great. All right, that's two plane crashes involving Chuck Lambert. This demon sounds like it was after him.”

“With all due respect to Chuck,” Sam said from the computer, “if that's the case, that would be the good news.”

“What's the bad news?”

“Chuck's plane went down exactly forty minutes into flight. And get this, so did flight 2485.”

“Forty minutes?” Jerry repeated. “What does that mean?”

“It's biblical numerology,” Dean explained. “You know Noah's ark, it rained for forty days.”

Melissa knocked the back of her head against the wall she was leaning on. “The number forty means death. This just keeps getting better.”

“I went back, and there have been six plane crashes over the last decade that all went down exactly forty minutes in,” Sam reported.

“Any survivors?”

“No. Or not until now, at least, not until flight 2485, for some reason.”

Melissa groaned. “On the cockpit voice recorder, remember what the EVP said? ‘No survivors.’ It's going after the people who survived the crash.”

Dean’s eyes widened in understanding. “It's trying to finish the job.”


	6. Demon in the Plane Part 2

Through a series of phone calls, Sam and Melissa were able to find out which of the remaining survivors posed a threat. The only one who was planning on flying again anytime soon was Amanda Walker, the flight attendant.

Dean, Melissa, and Sam rushed from the car to the airport to check the Departure board. “Right there,” said Sam. “They're boarding in thirty minutes.”

“Okay. We still have some cards to play. We need to find a phone.” Dean picked up a courtesy phone. “Hi. Gate thirteen. I'm trying to contact an Amanda Walker. She's a flight attendant on flight, um...flight 4-2-4.”

Melissa tried to get close enough to hear, but Dean pushed her away.

“Miss Walker. Hi, this is Dr. James Hetfield from St. Francis Memorial Hospital. We have a Karen Walker here. It’s nothing serious, just a minor car accident, but she was injured, so—” Dean pauses. “You what?”

‘ _What’s going on?_ ’ Sam mouthed to his brother.

Dean ignored him. “Uh, well...there must be some mistake.”

Sam moved closer to Dean to try to hear what was being said.

“Guilty as charged. He's really sorry.”

Melissa and Sam frowned and exchanged a look.

“Yes, but...he really needs to see you tonight, so— Don't be like that. Come on. The guy's a mess. Really. It's pathetic.”

Melissa cocked her head to the side and mouthed, ‘ _I am so confused._ ’

Dean rolled his eyes at her. “Oh, yeah. No, no. Wait, Amanda. Amanda! Damn it! So close.”

“All right, it's time for plan B,” Sam decided. “We're getting on that plane.”

“Whoa, whoa, now just hold on a second,” Dean said, going wide-eyed.

“Dean, that plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board, and if we're right, that plane is gonna crash.”

“I know.”

“Okay. So we're getting on the plane, we need to find that demon and exorcise it. I'll get the tickets. You—”

“Sam,” Melissa cut him off.

Dean just stood there, looking at them anxiously.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked his brother.

“No, not really.”

“What? What's wrong?”

“Well, I kind of have this problem with, uh...”

“Flying?” Melissa guessed.

Dean made a face. “It's never really been an issue until now.”

Sam stared at him. “You're joking, right?”

“Do I look like I'm joking?” the elder Winchester snapped. “Why do you think I drive everywhere, Sam?”

“All right. Uh, we'll go.” Sam shrugged.

“What?”

“We'll do this one on our own,” he explained.

“What are you, nuts?” Dean hissed. “You said it yourself, the plane's gonna crash.”

Sam huffed. “Dean, we can do it together, or Mel and I can do this one by ourselves. I'm not seeing a third option, here.”

“It’s really not that big of a deal, Dean,” Melissa insisted.

Dean crossed his arms. “No. There’s a demon on that plane, I’m not letting Sammy go alone.”

“Dean—”

“I am perfectly capable of keeping Sam safe!”

“Three tickets, Sam. I’ll get the gear.”

* * *

“ _Flight attendants, please cross-check doors before departure._ ”

Melissa looked over to see Dean anxiously reading the safety card.

“Just try to relax,” Sam said.

“Just try to shut up,” Dean snapped.

The plane took off, with Dean jumping at every sound. Sam smirked, Melissa snorted, and both of them went back to reading. After a few minutes, Sam looked over at Dean again. “You’re humming Metallica?”

“Calms me down,” Dean responded, stiffly.

“Look, man, I get you're nervous, all right? But you got to stay focused.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, we got thirty-two minutes and counting to track this thing down, or whoever it's possessing, anyway, and perform a full-on exorcism.”

“Yeah, on a crowded plane. That's gonna be easy.”   

Melissa leaned in. “Actually—”

“Just take it one step at a time, all right?” Sam interrupted. “Now, who is it possessing?”

The female hunter huffed. “With disaster demons, it's usually someone with some sort of hole in their mental or emotional barriers. An addiction or anxiety, for example.”

“Well, this is Amanda's first flight after the crash. If I were her, I'd be pretty messed up.”

Dean turned to the passing flight attendant. “Excuse me. Are you Amanda?”

“No, I'm not,” the woman replied.

“Oh, my mistake.” Dean twisted in his seat to looked at the back of the plane. “All right, well, that's got to be Amanda back there, so I'll go talk to her, and, uh, I'll get a read on her mental state.”

“What if she's already possessed?” Sam asked.

“There's ways to test that.” Dean a Virgin Mary-shaped bottle of water out of his bag. “I brought holy water.”

“That actually isn’t—” Melissa tried to protest, but Sam cut her off again, snatching the bottle from Dean’s hand and tucking it inside his hoodie. “No. I think we can go more subtle. If she's possessed, she'll flinch at the name of God.”

“Oh, nice.” Dean got up out of his seat.

“Hey, say it in Latin,” Sam reminded him.

“I know.”

“Okay. Hey!”

“What?” Dean hissed.

“Uh, in Latin, it's Christo.”

“Dude, I know! I'm not an idiot!” Dean made his way to the back of the plane.

“Will just saying Christo actually bother demons?” Melissa questioned.

Sam looked at her. “Yeah, you didn’t know that?”

She shook her head. “No. Never heard that before.”

The Winchester looked at her, noticing the way she was bouncing her leg and not really paying attention to the words in her book. “Are you alright.”

“Everyone’s scared of something, Sammy,” Melissa murmured. “Dean’s aviophobic. You’re coulrophobic. I may be slightly claustrophobic.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I know how to control my fear, Sam.” After a few moments, she spoke again. “You know—”

Dean returned to his seat. “All right, well, she's got to be the most well-adjusted person on the planet.”

“You said 'Christo'?” Sam asked, ignoring Melissa’s eye roll.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“There's no demon in her.”

“Or maybe it just didn’t work,” Melissa suggested.

“Just because you’ve never heard of the method, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, Mel,” Sam said. “Anyway, if it's on the plane, it can be anyone. Anywhere.”

The plane shook.

“Come on! That can't be normal!” Dean complained.

“Hey, hey, it's just a little turbulence,” Sam tried to reassure him.

“Sam, this plane is going to crash, okay? So quit treating me like I'm friggin' four.”

“You need to calm down,” Melissa told him.

“Well, I'm sorry I can't.”

“Yes, you can,” Sam insisted.”

Dean glared at him. “Dude, stow the touchy-feely, self-help yoga crap, it's not helping.”

Melissa leaned over in front of Sam and shoved an iPod into Dean’s chest. “Dean, if you're panicked, you're wide open to demonic possession. You have to calm yourself down. Put those earbuds in.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

Dean complied. He closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. After a few moments, he took the earbuds out and handed the iPod back to Melissa. “Nice song choice.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, I found an exorcism in here that I think is gonna work.” Sam showed Dean a page in their father’s journal. “The Rituale Romanum.”

“Sam, you don’t—”

“What do we have to do?” Dean asked.

Melissa sat back in her seat and sighed. “I give up.” She put the earbuds in and tuned out the Winchesters.

Dean pulled the EMF meter out of his bag and walked slowly up the aisle. Once he reached the end of the aisle, Sam followed. Melissa pulled the earbuds back out and narrowed her eyes at the boys. They both looked down at the meter and she got up to join them.

“Ah, crap,” she whispered, frowning not at the meter, but at the copilot who has just exited the bathroom and was headed for the cockpit. He froze in his steps and turned to face them, eyes pitch black.

“What do we do now?” Sam wondered.

“We talk to Amanda,” Dean said. The three of them headed back down the aisle back to where Amanda was behind the curtain.

“Oh, hi,” she said when she noticed them go in. “Flight's not too bumpy for you, I hope.”

“Actually, that's kind of what we need to talk to you about,” Dean said.

Sam closed the curtain and Amanda looked a little nervous. “Um, okay. What can I do for you?”

“This is gonna sound nuts, but we just don't have time for the whole "the truth is out there" speech right now.”

“All right, look, we know you were on flight 2485.”

Amanda's smile disappeared. “Who are you people?”

“Now, we've spoken to some of the other survivors. We know something brought down that plane and it wasn't a mechanical failure.”

“We need your help because we need to stop it from happening again. Here. Now.”

“I'm sorry, I—I'm very busy. I have to go back—” Amanda tried to brush past them, but Melissa stopped her.

“Please, just wait. We’re not here to hurt you, we just need you to listen. The pilot in 2485, Chuck Lambert, is dead.”

“Wait. What? What, Chuck is dead?”

“He died in a plane crash,” Dean explained. “Now, that's two plane crashes in two months. That doesn't strike you as strange?”

“There was something wrong with 2485. Now maybe you sensed it, maybe you didn't. But there's something wrong with this flight, too,” Sam insisted.

Amanda hesitated. “On... on 2485, there was this man. He... had these eyes.”

Sam nodded. “Yes. That's exactly what we're talking about.”   

“I don't understand, what are you asking me to do?”

“We need you to bring the copilot back here,” Melissa said.

“Why? What does he have to do with anything?”

“Don't have time to explain,” Dean said. “We just need to talk to him. Okay?”

“Do whatever it takes,” Sam added. “Tell him there's something broken back here, whatever will get him out of that cockpit.”

“Do you know that I could lose my job if you—”

“Okay, well you're gonna lose a lot more if you don't help us out,” Dean interrupted.

After another moment of hesitation, Amanda took a deep breath. “Okay. She leaves and goes to the cockpit. The copilot appeared when she knocked on the door and followed her back. Sam hands Dean the holy water, which Dean trades for John's journal.

When the copilot walked through the curtains, Dean punched him in the face, knocking him to the floor. He pinned the demon down and put duct tape over his mouth. 

“Wait. What are you doing?” Amanda protested. “You said you were just gonna talk to him.”

“We are gonna talk to him.” Dean splashed holy water on his skin, which sizzled.

“Oh, my god. What's wrong with him?”

Melissa stepped between Amanda and the demon. “We need you to stay calm. Go outside the curtain and don't let anybody in, okay? Can you do that? Can you do that? Amanda?”

Amanda nodded. “Okay. Okay.”

“Hurry up, Sam. I don't know how much longer I can hold him.” Dean growled.

Sam found the right page in the journal and began to recite the exorcism. “ _Regna terrae, cantate Deo, psallite Domino—_ ”

The demon broke free briefly and knocked Dean off, pulling the tape off his mouth. He grabbed Sam by the collar. “I know what happened to your girlfriend! She must have died screaming! Even now, she's burning!”

Dean recovered and hit the demon again as Sam sat there, stunned. “Sam!”

Melissa shoved Sam out of the way. “Oh, for crying out loud! _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica. Ergo omnis legio diabolica, adiuramus te. Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque æternæ perditionis venenum propinare._ ”

The Demon smoked out of the copilot’s body and disappeared into a vent. 

Melissa swore.

“It's in the plane,” Dean said. “Hurry up, Melissa. You’ve got to finish it.”

The plane suddenly dipped and heaved violently. Sam and Melissa were tossed to the floor as Dean was thrown against the exit door, screaming.

Melissa shook herself off and finished the exorcism. “ _Vade, turpi daemonium. Humiliare sub potenti manu Dei; contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine, quem inferi tremunt. Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine. Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos._ ”

A bright electrical charge ran through the entire plane, which then leveled out. The three Hunters breathed a sigh of relief.

Dean looked at Melissa. “You’ve memorized an exorcism?”

She looked back at him, amused. “You haven’t?”

“Why?”

“How else was I supposed to convince my Dad to take me hunting?” She chuckled, then turned to Sam. “You okay?”

Sam leaned against the wall. “It knew about Jessica.”

Dean opened his mouth to reassure his brother, but Melissa cut him off. “Sam, it was a demon. Demons lie. Okay? That's all it was.”

Sam didn’t look convinced. “Yeah.”

“Come on,” said Dean. “Let’s get back to our seats.”

* * *

They took the next flight back to Pennsylvania and met Jerry at the airport.

“Nobody knows what you guys did, but I do. A lot of people could have been killed.” Jerry shook each of their hands, ending with Sam. “Your dad's gonna be real proud.”

“We'll see you around, Jerry.”

He started to head off, but Dean called after him, “You know, Jerry, I meant to ask you. How did you get my cell phone number, anyway? I've only had it for like six months.”

“Your dad gave it to me,” Jerry responded.

“What?” Sam and Melissa asked in unison.

“When did you talk to him?” Dean questioned.

“I mean, I didn't exactly talk to him, but I called his number. His voice message said to give you a call. Thanks again, guys.” Jerry left.

The brothers and Melissa looked at each other. Sam shook his head. “This doesn't make any sense, man. I've called Dad's number like fifty times. It's been out of service.”

Dean dials the number. As the voice message began and he turns the phone so Sam and Melissa could hear too.

“ _This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son, Dean. 785-555-0179. He can help._ ”

Sam scowled, not liking the implications of their Dad’s cell phone suddenly starting to work again. Melissa cleared her throat. “You know, just for future reference, we probably shouldn’t count on the Christo thing working.”

“Why?” Dean asked.

“Christo isn’t the Latin word for God. It’s Deus.”

“Amanda wasn’t possessed, though. Would it have worked if she was?”

Melissa shrugged. “Hell if I know. But let’s stick to the holy water next time.”

“Next time?” Dean scoffed, getting in the car. “You planning on running into a demon again anytime soon?

Sam snorted as he and Melissa took their places in the car. “I sure as hell hope not.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Our new beta complained about us pointing out the Christo error and having the demon's eyes go black anyway. This isn't a plot hole, it will be explained.


	7. The Legend of Bloody Mary Part 1

As Dean pulled the Impala into a parking space, Sam’s distress became more evident. Melissa poked him in the back of the neck. “Sam, wake up.”

Sam jerked awake and looked around, confused. “I take it I was having a nightmare.”

“Yeah,” Dean confirmed, “another one.”

“Hey, at least I got some sleep.”

“You know, sooner or later we're gonna have to talk about this.”

Sam turned to look out the back window, ignoring the look Melissa was giving him. “Are we here?”

“Welcome to Toledo, Ohio,” Melissa said.

Sam picked up the newspaper with Steven Shoemaker’s obituary circled. “So what do you think really happened to this guy?”

“That's what we're gonna find out,” Dean said.

Melissa opened the door. “My money’s on a spirit.”

“You always say that.”

“And how many times have I been right, Winchester?”

“I think you just like burning things.”

Dean and Melissa continued to argue as they entered the building and headed to room 144. There were two desks. One was empty and had a nameplate that said Dr. D. Feiklowicz. A morgue tech sat behind the second desk. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Dean said, taking the lead.

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah. We're the, uh... med students.”

The morgue tech frowned. “Sorry?”

“Oh, Doctor…” he stumbled over the name. “Figlavitch didn't tell you? We talked to him on the phone. He, uh, we're from Ohio State. He's supposed to show us the Shoemaker corpse. It's for our project.”

“Well, I'm sorry, he's at lunch.”

“Oh well, he said… you know, it doesn't matter. You don't mind just showing us the body, do you?”

The tech shook his head. “Sorry, I can't. Doc will be back in an hour. You can wait for him if you want.”

“An hour?” Dean grimaced. “Ooh. We gotta be heading back to Columbus by then. Look, man, this project’s like half our grade, so if you don't mind helping us out—”

“Uh, look, man... no.”

Dean scowled and Melissa put a hand on his arm. She brushed passed Sam to stand between Dean and the desk. “Sorry about him. He’s not doing to great grade wise and this project is his chance to change that. We really need to see this body.” She pulled a wallet from her pocket and laid five twenties on the man’s desk.

The morgue tech picked up the money. “Follow me.” He got up and left.

“That was my wallet!” Sam hissed, snatching it from her hands.

“I got us in, didn’t I?”

“I earned that money,” Dean protested.

“You won it in a poker game,” Sam scoffed. They followed the tech into the morgue. “Now the newspaper said his daughter found him. She said his eyes were bleeding.”

The tech pulled back the sheet over the corpse’s face. “More than that. They practically liquefied.”

“Any sign of a struggle? Dean asked. “Maybe somebody did it to him?”

“Nope. Besides the daughter, he was all alone.”

“What's the official cause of death?”

“Doc's not sure,” the tech admitted. “He's thinking massive stroke, maybe an aneurysm? Something burst up in there, that's for sure.”

Sam frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Intense cerebral bleeding. This guy had more blood in his skull than anyone I've ever seen.”

Melissa studied the corpse. “They eyes, what would cause something like that?”

“Capillaries can burst. See a lot of bloodshot eyes with stroke victims.”

“Bloodshot, but not exploded.”

“Yeah, that's a first for me. But hey, I'm not the doctor.”

Dean shared a look with Sam. “Hey, think we could take a look at that police report? You know for the project.”

“I'm not really supposed to show you that.”

Sam, annoyed, pulled out his wallet back out.

When the left the hospital, Sam spoke up. “Might not be one of ours. Might just be some freak medical thing.”

Dean scoffed. “Hey, Melissa. How many times has it been a freak medical thing and not a sign of a supernatural caused death?”

“In my experience, never.”

“All right,” Sam relented. “Let's go talk to the daughter.”

* * *

The trio walked into the funeral. The attendees are all men in black suits and women in black dresses, except Dean, Sam, and Melissa. They were led to the backyard and pointed to a group of four young women when they asked about the daughter.

“You must be Donna, right?” Dean asked the older brunette.

“Yeah,” said Donna.

“We're really sorry,” Sam said. “I'm Sam, this is Dean and Melissa. Dean and I worked with your dad.”

“You did?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. This whole thing. I mean, a stroke. Were there any symptoms? Dizziness? Migraines?”

“No,” Donna denied.

The younger girl turned around. “That's because it wasn't a stroke.”

“Lily, don't say that,” Donna scolded. “I'm sorry, she's just upset.”

“No, it happened because of me,” Lily insisted.

“Lily,” Sam crouched down on to eye level with the girl, “why would you say something like that?”

“Right before he died, I said it.”

“You said what?”

Lily looked like she was about to cry. “Bloody Mary, three times in the bathroom mirror. She took his eyes, that's what she does.”

“That's not why Dad died. This isn't your fault,” Donna assured her sister.

“I think your sister's right, Lily,” said Dean. “There's no way it could have been Bloody Mary. Your dad didn't say it, did he?”

“No, I don't think so.”

The hunters went back inside and went to check out the upstairs bathroom. Sam pushed the door open and there was still some dried blood on the floor. “The Bloody Mary legend... Dad ever find any evidence that it was a real thing?”

“Not that I know of,” Dean replied, walking into the bathroom.

“But the legend had to start somewhere, right?” Melissa said, looking at her reflection in the mirror. “Everywhere else, kids play their games with ghosts and nobody has died from repeating a name three times while looking into a mirror. It’s just a story. But here…”

“You think this is the place where the legend began?” Sam asked.

Melissa shrugged and Dean opened the medicine cabinet.

“But according to the legend, the person who says…

Melissa shut the cabinet when she noticed Sam looking at his own reflection. “The person who says her name is supposed to be the one who turns up dead.”

“But Lily said it and Shoemaker gets iced instead,” Dean reminded her. “Never heard anything like that before. Still, the guy did die right in front of the mirror, and the daughter's right. The way the legend goes, she does scratch your eyes out.”

“It's worth checking in to,” Sam decided.

One of Donna’s friends appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing up here?” she demanded.

“I was looking for the bathroom,” Melissa replied.

“Who are you three?”

“Like we said downstairs,” said Dean, “we worked with Donna's dad.”

The woman crossed her arms. “He was a day trader or something. He worked by himself. And all those weird questions downstairs, what was that?” No one answered. “So you tell me what's going on, or I start screaming.”

“All right, all right. We think something happened to Donna's dad,” said Sam.

“Yeah, a stroke.”

“That's not a sign of a typical stroke.” Sam motioned to the dried blood on the floor. “We think it might be something else.”

“Like what?”

“Honestly? We don't know yet. But we don't want it to happen to anyone else. That's the truth.”

Charlie swallowed. “Who are you, cops?”

“Something like that,” Dean allowed.

“I'll tell you what. Here.” Sam reached into his pocket, pulled out a paper and pen, and started writing down his cell number. “If you think of anything, you or your friends notice anything strange, out of the ordinary...just give us a call.”

Sam handed her the paper as he, Melissa and Dean walked down the hallway. They left the Shoemakers’ and went straight to the library

“All right,” said Dean, “say Bloody Mary really is haunting this town. There's gonna be some sort of proof. Like a local woman who died nasty.”

“Yeah but with a legend this widespread, it's hard,” said Sam. “I mean, there's like 50 versions of who she actually is. One story says she's a witch, another says she's a mutilated bride, there's a lot more.”

“All right so what are we supposed to be looking for?”

“Every version of the legend has the same basic framework. A woman named Mary died in front of a mirror violently enough that she becomes a vengeful spirit,” Melissa recited. “So we search the local newspapers and other public records as far back as they go to if we can find a Mary who fits the bill.”

“Well that sounds annoying,” Dean grunted.

“No, it won't be so bad, as long as we...” Sam noticed the computers which all had signs saying ‘Out of Order.’ “I take it back. This will be very annoying.”

* * *

They continued their research back at the motel and Sam fell asleep almost instantly.

Dean watched his brother. “What’re the chances he’s gonna have another nightmare?”

“Inevitable, I’d say,” Melissa guessed. “Should we wake him up?”

“Nah, the kid needs sleep.” Dean scowled at Melissa’s confused expression. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s just that you usually prefer to have some sort of buffer.”

Dean snorted. “Are you surprised that I don’t exactly trust you?”

Melissa crossed her arms. “Sam does. If my brother came home with another hunter and said ‘She’s with us now. Don’t worry, you can trust her’ I wouldn’t question him.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m not actually all that surprised,” she admitted. “I never expected you to trust me implicitly, I fully aware that I haven’t earned that yet. I just wish you understood…”

“Understood what?” Dean questioned.

“Understood what me being here actually means. I didn’t have to come with you two. I was out. Stanford may not have been perfect, but it was a life and it wasn’t hunting. I could’ve kept on deluding myself into thinking I had a chance at my apple pie life. But I didn’t. I’m here because I care about what happens to Sam and because I trust you with my life.”

“I…”

“That fulfill your chick flick moment quota of the day?”

“Shut up, Melissa.”

Sam’s eyes snapped open and he gasped for air. Both Dean and Melissa went back to their books. “Why'd you let me fall asleep?”

“Cause I'm an awesome brother,” Dean responded. “So what did you dream about?”

“Lollipops and candy canes,” Sam deadpanned.

Melissa frowned. “Sam—”

“I’m fine. Did you find anything?”

“Oh besides a whole new level of frustration? No. I've looked at everything. A few local women, a Laura and a Catherine committed suicide in front of a mirror, and a giant mirror fell on a guy named Dave, but uh, no Mary.”

“Maybe we just haven't found it yet,” Sam suggested.

“I've also been searching for strange deaths in the area, anything that matches the death outside of the parameters of the legend. There's nothing,” said Melissa.

Dean shrugged. “Whatever's happening here, maybe it just ain't Mary.”

Sam’s phone rang. He answered and his face dropped almost immediately.

* * *

From after meeting Charlie in the park, they drove to Jill’s house and Charlie let Sam, Dean, and Melissa into her friend room through the window. Sam set their duffel on the bed and started going through it. “What did you tell Jill's mom?”

“Just that I needed some time alone with Jill's pictures and things. I hate lying to her.”

“Trust us, this is for the greater good,” Dean said. “Melissa hit the lights.”

Melissa complied.

“What are you guys looking for?” Charlie asked.

“We'll let you know as soon as we find it.” Melissa takes the digital camera from Sam and flicked a switch before handing it back. “Night vision.”

Sam aimed at the camera at Dean, who smirked. “Do I look like Paris Hilton?”

Sam walks over to the closet, opens the door, and began filming around the mirror. So I don't get it. I mean... the first victim didn't summon Mary, and the second victim did. How's she choosing them?”

“Beats me,” Dean grumbled. “I want to know why Jill said it in the first place.”

“It's just a joke,” Charlie defended.

“Two dead bodies aren’t a joke. Someone’s gonna say it again,” Melissa said. “It's only a matter of time.”

“Hey,” Sam called from the bathroom. “There's a black light in the trunk, right?”

Melissa pulled a UV flashlight from her pocket as Sam laid the mirror upside down on Jill’s bed.

Dean stared at her. “Another boy scout thing?”

“Never visit a crime scene without a black light, Dean.”

Sam peeled the brown paper off of the back of the mirror and shined the flashlight over the surface, revealing a handprint, and a name.’

“Gary Bryman?” Charlie read.

“You know who that is?” Sam asked.

Melissa gasped. “I know that name. Gary Bryman was an 8-year-old boy who was killed in a hit and run two years ago. The car was described as a black Toyota Camry. But nobody got the plates or saw the driver.

“Oh my God,” Charlie breathed. “Jill drove that car.”

“We need to get back to your friend Donna’s house,” Dean said, already climbing out the window.

The back of the mirror in the Shoemaker’s bathroom showed another handprint and the name ‘Linda Shoemaker.’ Questioning Donna didn’t go very well.

“Why are you asking me this?” Donna demanded.

“Look, we're sorry,” Sam apologized, “but it's important.”

“Yeah. Linda's my mom, okay? She overdosed on sleeping pills, it was an accident, and that's it. I think you should leave.”

“Now Donna, just listen,” Dean tried.

“Get out of my house!” Donna ran upstairs.

“Do you really think her dad could've killed her mom?” Charlie asked.

Melissa glanced at the brothers. “He may have had something to do with it.”

Charlie sighed. “I think I should stick around.”

Dean nodded. “All right. Whatever you do, don't—”

“Believe me,” the young woman said, “I won't say it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo I'm covering my mirror tonight. Just in case. Anyway, I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas!


	8. The Legend of Bloody Mary Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry. I spent most of Thursday in a car and I had to unpack yesterday. But here you go, the end of Bloody Mary.

Melissa had once told Sam that Hunters are habitual beings and to really know what kind of a person they were, you had to pay attention to the patterns they fall into during hunts.

She, for example, was a worrier. Her brother and her cousin could tell exactly how agitated she was by her actions during downtime. They’d even given her levels. Level one was sitting normally with a book. The closer she got to level two, the closer she would be to sitting upside down. Level two was pacing, the more agitated she got, the faster she’d walk. And if she ever reached what her cousin had once referred to as ‘DEFCON 3,’ she’d shove whoever was doing research out of the way and take over.

At this point, Sam would put Melissa— who was currently hanging upside down off of a chair and eyeing the laptop— and a 1.95. He sat across from Dean. “Wait, wait, wait, you're doing a nationwide search?”

“Yep. The NCIC, the FBI database— at this point, any Mary who died in front of a mirror is good enough for me.”

“But if she's haunting the town, she should have died in the town,” Sam pointed out.

“There’s nothing local, Sam, we’ve checked,” Melissa said from her perch. “Okay, information pool. What do we know about this bitch’s M.O.?”

“The way Mary's choosing her victims, it seems like there's a pattern,” said Sam.

Dean looked up from the laptop screen. “I know, I was thinking the same thing.”

“With mister Shoemaker and Jill's hit and run, they both had secrets where people died.”

“Exactly,” said Melissa. “There's a lot of folklore about mirrors. People say that they reveal all your lies or all your secrets, or that they're a true reflection of your soul, which is why it's bad luck to break them.”

“So maybe if you've got a secret, I mean like a really nasty one where someone died, then Mary sees it, and punishes you for it,” Dean suggested. 

“Whether you're the one that summoned her or not,” Sam added.

“Take a look at this.” Dean printed out two pictures. One was of a woman lying by a mirror in a puddle of blood. Melissa moved to peer over Sam’s shoulder at the second picture. A handprint and the letters T.R.E.

“Looks like the same handprint.”

“Her name was Mary Worthington— an unsolved murder in Fort Wayne, Indiana.”

Melissa huffed out a breath. “That’s, what, two hours from here?”

Dean closed the laptop. “We’ll head out first thing in the morning.”

* * *

“I was on the job for 35 years-detective for most of that. Now everybody packs it in with a few loose ends, but the Mary Worthington murder… that one still gets me,” the detective admitted.

“What exactly happened?” Dean asked.

The detective frowned. “You said you were reporters?”

“We know Mary was 19,” Sam said, “lived by herself. We know she won a few local beauty contests, dreamt of getting out of Indiana, being an actress. And we know the night of March 29th someone broke into her apartment and murdered her, cut out her eyes with a knife.”

Melissa stepped forward. “See sir, when we asked you what happened, we wanted to know what you think happened.”

The detective pulled some files out of his file cabinet. “Technically I'm not supposed to have a copy of this.” He opened a file to the picture Dean had found on the computer. “Now see that there? T-R-E? I think Mary was trying to spell out the name of her killer.”

“You know who it was?”

“Not for sure. But there was a local man, a surgeon-Trevor Sampson.” He pulled out a picture of a man. “And I think her cut her up good.”

“Now why would he do something like that?” Sam asked.

“Her diary mentioned a man that she was seeing. She called him by his initial, _T._ Well, her last entry, she was gonna tell T's wife about their affair.”

“Yeah, but how do you know it was Sampson who killed her?” Dean questioned.

“It's hard to say, but the way her eyes were cut out... it was almost professional.”

“But you could never prove it?” Melissa guessed.

The detective shook his head. “No. No prints, no witnesses. He was meticulous.”

“Is he still alive?”

The detective sat down and sighed. “Nope. If you ask me, Mary spent her last living moments trying to expose this guy's secret. But she never could.”

“Where's she buried?”

“She wasn't. She was cremated.”

The hunters exchanged looks. “What about that mirror?” Dean nodded at the one in the picture. “It's not in some evidence lockup somewhere is it?”

“Ah, no. It was returned to Mary's family a long time ago.”

Melissa leaned forward. “You have the names of her family by any chance?”

The detective gave them the names. They bid him goodbye and headed back to the car. Melissa got Sam the phone number of Mary Worthington’s brother.

“Oh really?” Sam said. “Ah, that's too bad Mr. Worthington. I would have paid a lot for that mirror. Okay, well maybe next time. All right, thanks.” He hung up.

“So?”

“The mirror was in the family for years, until he sold it one week ago to a store called Estate Antiques. A store in Toledo.”

“So wherever the mirror goes, that's where Mary goes,” Melissa reasoned.

Sam agreed. “Her spirit's definitely tied up with it somehow.”

“Isn't there an old superstition that says mirrors can capture spirits?” Dean recalled.

“Yep,” Melissa confirmed. “When someone would die in a house people would cover up the mirrors so the ghost wouldn't get trapped.”

“So Mary dies in front of a mirror, and it draws in her spirit.”

“Yeah, but how could she move through like a hundred different mirrors?” Sam wondered.

Dean turned back to the road. “I don't know, but if the mirror is the source, I say we find it and smash it.”

“I don't know, maybe.” Sam's cell phone rang. He answered and concern immediately crossed his face. “Charlie?”

* * *

They picked Charlie up from her school and brought her back to the motel. Dean and Melissa went about covering up anything reflective while Sam tried to calm her down. Once the room was Mary-proofed, Dean joined Sam.

“All right Charlie. We need to know what happened.”

“We were in the bathroom,” Charlie managed. “Donna said it.”

“That's not what we're talking about,” Melissa said, gently. “Something happened once. You had a secret and someone got hurt. Can you tell us about it?”

Charlie’s lower lip trembled. “I had this boyfriend. I loved him. But he kind of scared me too, you know? And one night, at his house, we got in this fight. Then I broke up with him, and he got upset, and he said he needed me and he loved me, and he said ‘Charlie, if you walk out that door right now, I'm gonna kill myself.’ And you know what I said? I said, ‘Go ahead.’ And I left. How could I say that? How could I leave him like that? I just... I didn't believe him, you know? I should have.” She put her face back on her knees and started crying again.

Melissa moved to sit on Charlie’s right and put her arm around the other girl. “It’s going to be okay,” she promised. “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get rid of the ghost, and you’re going to be okay.”

They left Charlie in the motel room. Melissa was silent as she climbed into the backseat of the Impala and Dean drove off, staring pensively out the window.

Dean spoke up. “You know her boyfriend killing himself, that's not really Charlie's fault.”

“Spirits don't exactly see shades of gray, Dean,” Sam reminded him. “Charlie had a secret, someone died, that's good enough for Mary.”

“I guess.”

“You know, I've been thinking. It might not be enough to just smash that mirror.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Well, Mary's hard to pin down, right? I mean she moves around from mirror to mirror so who's to say that she's not just gonna keep hiding in them forever? So maybe we should try to pin her down, you know, summon her to her mirror and then smash it.”

“How do you know that's going to work?” Dean protested.

“I don't,” Sam admitted, “not for sure.”

“Who's gonna summon her?”

“I will. She'll come after me.”

“You know what, that's it.” Dean pulled the car over. “This is about Jessica, isn't it? You think that's your dirty little secret, that you killed her somehow? Sam, this has got to stop, man. I mean, the nightmares and calling her name out in the middle of the night. It's gonna kill you. Now listen to me, it wasn't your fault. If you wanna blame something, then blame the thing that killed her. Or hell, why don't you take a swing at me? I mean I'm the one that dragged you away from her in the first place.”

Sam looked over at him. “I don't blame you.”

Dean glared right back. “You shouldn't blame yourself because there's nothing you could've done.”

“I could've warned her.”

“About what?” the elder Winchester nearly shouted. “You didn't know what was gonna happen! And besides, all of this isn't a secret, I mean I know all about it. It's not gonna work with Mary anyway.”

Sam turned his eyes back to the road. “No, you don't.”

“I don't what?”

“You don't know all about it. I haven't told you everything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well it wouldn't really be a secret if I told you, would it?”

Dean recoiled, surprised. “No. I don't like it. It's not gonna happen, forget it.”

“Dean, that girl back there is going to die unless we do something about it.”

“Sam’s right,” Melissa said, breaking her silence. She kept her eyes on a rain droplet sliding down the window and refused to look at the boys in the front seat. “Mary needs to be stopped and it has to be one of us.”

Sam nodded. “Exactly.”

“I’m going to be the one to do it.”

“ _Seriously_?” Dean demanded.

“Mel, no,” Sam argued.

Melissa finally looked at them, Sam thought he noticed a watery gleam in her eyes. “Your _thing_ about Jess’ death isn’t a secret, Sam. You don’t fit the criteria.”

“And you do?”

“Yes, actually. Believe it or not, I’ve been at this long enough to have gotten blood on my hands thanks to secrecy. I’m going to summon her, end of discussion.”

Nobody spoke the rest of the ride to the shop. Sam picked the lock on the door and the hunters were greeted by a multitude of mirrors.

“Well... that's just great.” Dean grumbled. He pulled out the picture of Mary's dead body to look at the mirror. “All right let's start looking.” They split up and walked around the store. “Maybe they've already sold it.”

“I don't think so,” Sam called back.

Melissa and Dean joined Sam in front of the mirror. Dean held up the picture for comparison. “That's it.” He sighed. “Melissa, you sure about this?”

Melissa took a deep breath and steeled herself. Without giving an answer, she tightens her grip on the crowbar and spoke. “Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary.”

She saw the lights, most likely from someone’s headlight, shine into the store in the mirror.

“We'll go check that out. Stay here, be careful,” Dean instructed. Smash anything that moves.” He and Sam went back towards the front door.

Melissa heard someone inhale but kept her eyes on the mirror. Mary flickered into existence in the reflection, the flickers into a different mirror. Any surface the ghost appeared in, Melissa smashed with the crowbar without hesitation. “Come on, you bitch,” she murmured, turning to face Mary’s original once again.

Melissa scowled at her reflection as it took one hand off of its crowbar. She could feel her air supply being cut off and the trickle of blood leaking from her eye. She dropped her crowbar and gritted her teeth.

“It's your fault. You killed her. You killed Jessica,” the reflection spat. “You never told Sam the truth— who you really were, what you really know. But it's more than that, isn't it? Those nightmares he’d been having of Jessica dying, screaming, burning. You knew what they were and you let him ignore them. Didn't you!?”

Melissa fell to her knees, blood now coming from both eyes.

“You were so desperate to stay out of this life, you let your friend die!” the reflection shouted. “How could you do that to Jess? To Sam? You should’ve warned them! He’s suffering! Sammy is suffering! How could you do that to—”

Sam’s crowbar went through the mirror and the hunter bent down next to her. “Melissa, MEL!”

Blood was obscuring her vision, but she could hear Dean’s worried, “God, is she okay?”

“I appreciate the concern, but I’m fine,” she croaked.

“Come on.” Sam pulled Melissa to her feet. Dean put her arm around his shoulder, and they all started hobbling towards the door. At the sound of shifted glass, they turn around to see Mary crawling towards them. In a blink, she was on her feet and the hunters, all bleeding from the face, collapsed. Dean reached out and pulled over a mirror so that Mary was forced to see her own reflection.

They watched as Mary dissolved into a pool of blood and broken glass. Dean threw down the mirror he held and it shattered.

“Hey, Dean?” Melissa said, surveying the damage they had done.

“Yeah?”

“You think this means, like 600 years of bad luck?”

Sam chuckled weakly.

* * *

Dean pulled the car up in front of Charlie's house and turned around to look at the two girls in the backseat.

“This is really over?” Charlie asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, it's over.”

“Thank you.” She got out of the car.

“Charlie?” Sam called after her. “Your boyfriend's death... you really should try to forgive yourself. No matter what you did, you probably couldn't have stopped it. Sometimes bad things just happen.”

Charlie smiled faintly, then turned around to go into the house.

“That's good advice,” Dean said and stepped on the gas. “Hey, Sam? Now that this is all over, I want you to tell me what that secret is.”

“Look... you're my brother and I'd die for you,” Sam said, “but there are some things I need to keep to myself. Besides, I’d rather know what Mel’s secret was.”

Melissa looked out the window, somberly. “It was on a hunt with my brother. I withheld information that could’ve prevented casualties so I could ice the bastard on my own,” she lied.

She couldn’t see Sam or Dean’s reactions, but Melissa had a feeling that they didn’t quite believe her.


	9. The Journey Home Part 1

Melissa eyed Sam over the top of her book. He was drawing something on the motel’s pad of paper with his brows furrowed. He had woken up from another nightmare the night before and she was starting to worry about him.

“Books aren’t going to help you find the next hunt.”

She made a face at Dean. “Maybe not, but they will help on a hunt. Before I went to school, ninety percent of the time someone pulled my ass out of the fire, it was because I hadn’t doubled checked the lore.”

Dean scoffed. “Well, I’ve been cruisin’ some websites. I think I found a few candidates for our next gig. A fishing trawler found off the coast of Cali. Its crew vanished. And, uh, we got some cattle mutilations in West Texas. Hey.” Sam looked up from his drawing. “Are we boring you with this hunting evil stuff?”

Sam blinked. “No. I’m listening. Keep going.”

“And, here, a Sacramento man shot himself in the head. Three times. Any of these things blowin’ up your skirt, pal?”

The younger brother frowned at his drawings. “Wait. I’ve seen this.”

Mel cocked her head to the side. “Seen what?”

Sam got up from the bed and started digging through his duffel bag.

“What are you doing?” Dean asked.

Sam pulled out a photo of the Winchesters from when he was a baby out of John’s journal. He compared the tree in the photo to his drawing. “Dean, I know where we have to go next.”

“Where?”

“Back home. Back to Kansas.”

Melissa flinched. “Back to… Lawrence?” she asked.

Dean frowned at her hesitation but shrugged it off. “Okay, random. Where’d that come from?”

Sam showed the photo to his brother. “All right, um, this photo was taken in front of our old house, right? The house where Mom died?”

“Yeah.”

“And it didn’t burn down, right? I mean, not completely, they rebuilt it, right?”

“I guess so, yeah. What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

“Okay, look, this is gonna sound crazy but… the people who live in our old house, I think they might be in danger.”

“Why would you think that?”

Sam hesitated. “Uh… it’s just, um… look, just trust me on this, okay?” He started packing the duffles.

Melissa closed her book. “Sam—”

“I know you said they were probably just dreams, Mel, but they _weren’t_. You’ve gotta trust me on this,” Sam insisted.

“Dreams?” Dean stood. “What dreams?”

Sam sighed. “I have these nightmares.”

Dean nodded. “We’ve noticed.”

“And sometimes…” Sam looked at Melissa, who nodded, “they come true.”

“Come again?”

“Look, Dean… I dreamt about Jessica’s death for days before it happened.”

“Sam, people have weird dreams, man. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.” Dean sat down on the bed.

“No, I dreamt about the blood dripping, her on the ceiling, the fire, everything, and I didn’t do anything about it ‘cause I didn’t believe it.” Sam glanced at Melissa, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. “And now I’m dreaming about that tree, about our house, and about some woman inside screaming for help. I mean, that’s where it all started, man, this has to mean something, right?”

“I don’t know.”

Sam sat down across from Dean. “What do you mean you don’t know, Dean? This woman might be in danger. I mean, this might even be the thing that killed Mom and Jessica!”

Dean jumped to his feet and started to pace. “All right, just slow down, would ya? I mean, first, you tell me that you’ve got the Shining? And then you tell me that I’ve gotta go back home? Especially when…”

Sam looked up at him. “When what?”

“When I swore to myself that I would never go back there?” he managed.

Sam lowered his voice. “Look, Dean, we have to check this out. Just to make sure.”

Dean didn’t respond. Melissa sighed. “Sam, can I have a minute with your brother?”

Sam nodded, grabbed his duffle to put in the car, and left the room. Dean looked at Melissa.

“You knew,” he accused.

Melissa took a deep breath. “My family’s worked with a psychic quite a few times. I think he might be a precog.”

“So he knew what was going to happen. He told you and you did nothing?”

“It didn’t make any sense,” she insisted. “I knew your brother for years, Dean, there was no sign of any precognitive powers. I kept an eye out for signs, told Sam to break out the salt just in case, but I never thought…” Melissa trailed off, a look of fear dawning on her face.

Dean noticed. “What?”

“He said the dream was of your old house and woman inside screaming for help.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve never gone back there? Never checked out the house since that night?”

“No, why?”

Melissa swallowed. “Not to be insensitive or anything, Dean, but your mother was killed in that house. What if she’s still there?”

* * *

Dean parked the Impala across the street.

“You gonna be all right, man?” Sam asked him.

“Let me get back to you on that.” They got out of the car.

After knocking on the front door, a blonde woman answered it. “Yes?”

Dean started to offer some sort of lie, but Sam cut him off. “I’m Sam Winchester, and this is my brother, Dean, and our friend Mel Burke. Dean and I used to live here. You know, we were just drivin’ by, and we were wondering if we could come see the old place.”

“Winchester. Yeah, that’s so funny. You know, I think I found some of your photos the other night,” said the woman.

“You did?” Dean asked.

She nodded and stepped aside. “I’m Jenny. Come on in.”

Inside the house, the three of them followed Jenny to the kitchen. A girl sat at the table doing homework, her jumpy toddler brother was in his playpen.

“Juice! Juice! Juice! Juice!” the toddler chanted.

Jenny got a sippy cup full of juice out of the fridge to give to the toddler. “That’s Ritchie. He’s kind of a juice junkie. But, hey, at least he won’t get scurvy.” She walked over to the girl. “Sari, this is Sam, Dean, and Mel. The boys used to live here.”

“Hi,” said Sari. The boys waved.

“So, you just moved in?” Dean questioned.

“Yeah, from Wichita.”

“You got family here, or?”

Jenny smiled, but it was forced. “No. I just, uh… needed a fresh start, that’s all. So, new town, new job, I mean, as soon as I find one. New house.”

“So, how you likin’ it so far?” Sam asked.

“Well, all due respect to your childhood home, I mean, I’m sure you had lots of happy memories here.” She didn’t see Dean’s weak smile. “But this place has its issues.”

Melissa leaned forward slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just getting old. Like the wiring, you know? We’ve got flickering lights almost hourly. Sink’s backed up, there’s rats in the basement.” Jenny paused. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to complain.”

Dean just smiled at her. “No. Have you seen the rats or have you just heard scratching?”

“It’s just the scratching, actually.”

“Mom?” Sari spoke up. Jenny knelt down next to her. “Ask them if it was here when they lived here.”

Sam looked at her. “What, Sari?”

“The thing in my closet.”

“Oh, no, baby, there was nothing in their closets.” She turned to the brothers. “Right? She had a nightmare the other night.”

“I wasn’t dreaming,” Sari insisted. “It came into my bedroom and it was on fire.”

The hunters thanked Jenny and said their goodbyes, hurrying out of the house.

“You hear that?” Sam said. “You hear what she was talking about? Scratching, flickering lights, both signs of a malevolent spirit.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just freaked out that your weirdo visions are comin’ true,” Dean grumbled.

“Well, forget about that for a minute. The thing in the house, do you think it’s the thing that killed Mom and Jessica?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well, I mean, has it come back or has it been here the whole time?”

“Or maybe it’s something else entirely, Sam, we don’t know yet.”

“A figure on fire,” Melissa murmured as they got in the car.

Sam looked at her. “What?”

“That’s what the kid said.” Melissa turned her gaze to Dean. “The thing in her closet was on fire.”

He shook his head. “No, Melissa. It can’t be that.”

Sam huffed. “Well, those people are in danger. We have to get ‘em out of that house.”

“And we will.”

“No,” Sam argued. “I mean now.”

Dean glared at him. “And how you gonna do that, huh? You got a story that she’s gonna believe?”

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

“We just gotta chill out, that’s all. You know, if this was any other kind of job, what would we do?”

“Figure out what we’re dealing with,” Melissa supplied. “We’d dig into the history of the house.”

“Exactly,” Dean agreed. “Except this time, we already know what happened.”

“Yeah, but how much do we know?” Sam wondered. “I mean, how much do you actually remember?”

“About that night, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Not much,” Dean admitted. “I remember the fire… the heat. And then I carried you out the front door.”

Sam looked surprised. “You did?”

“Yeah, what, you never knew that?”

The younger brother shook his head. “No.”

“And, well, you know Dad’s story as well as I do. Mom was…. was on the ceiling. And whatever put her there was long gone by the time Dad found her.”

“And he never had a theory about what did it?”

“If he did, he kept it to himself. God knows we asked him enough times.”

Sam spun to face the backseat. “Any ideas, Mel?”

Melissa frowned. “I don’t know. There was a story my cousin told me when I was younger, but…” She seemed to consider it before shaking her head. “No. We would know if that was the case here. It’s not.”

“Okay. So, if we’re gonna figure out what’s goin’ on now… we have to figure out what happened back then. And see if it’s the same thing.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. We’ll talk to Dad’s friends, neighbors, people who were there at the time.”

“Does this feel like just another job to you?” Sam asked quietly.

Dean didn’t answer.

* * *

The brothers went into the garage to talk to John’s old business partner and gained some new information.

“A psychic?” Melissa clarified as Sam flipped through the yellow pages. “Your dad went to see a psychic?”

“Yeah,” said Dean. “You said your family worked with psychics before, why can’t ours?”

Melissa just shook her head. “Forget it. What have you got, Sam?”

“All right, so there are a few psychics and palm readers in town. There’s someone named El Divino. There…” He laughed. “There’s the Mysterious Mister Fortinsky. Uh, Missouri Moseley—”

Melissa tensed.

Dean stepped forward. “Wait, wait. Missouri Moseley? That’s a psychic?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

Dean grabbed John’s journal from the car. “In Dad’s journal… here, look at this.” He opened to the first page. “First page, first sentence, read that.”

Sam read aloud, “I went to Missouri and I learned the truth.”

“I always thought he meant the state,” said Dean.

“Missouri Moseley,” Melissa murmured, absently.

“The name ring a bell?”

It took a moment, but Melissa shook herself back into the present. “No, never heard it before.”

Sam squinted at her, then looked at his brother. “Well, let’s go pay her a visit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come scream with me on [tumblr](https://dreamhunter-trash.tumblr.com)  
> 


	10. The Journey Home Part 2

Missouri Moseley escorted a man out of the house while the trio of hunters sat on the couch, waiting. “All right, there. Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing. Your wife is crazy about you.” She closed the door behind him and turned to face the three. “Poor bastard. His woman is cold-bangin’ the gardener.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Dean asked.

“People don’t come here for the truth. They come for good news. Well? Melissa, Sam, and Dean, come on already, I ain’t got all day.” Dean and Sam exchanged a confused look.

Melissa huffed out a breath. “Psychics.”

They followed Missouri into the next room. “Well, lemme look at ya. Oh, you boys grew up handsome.” Missouri pointed a finger at Dean. “And you were one goofy-lookin’ kid, too.” She took Sam’s hand. “Sam. Oh, honey… I’m sorry about your girlfriend. And your father, he’s missin’?”

“How’d you know all that?” Sam questioned.

“Well, you were just thinkin’ it just now.”

The brothers were immediately intrigued. “Well, where is he? Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know?” Dean repeated. “Well, you’re supposed to be a psychic, right?”

“Boy, you see me sawin’ some bony tramp in half? You think I’m a magician? I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies in a room, but I can’t just pull facts out of thin air. Sit, please.”

Sam smirked at Dean and they sat down. Sam glanced at Melissa to see if she was going to join them, but she remained standing, her jaw clenched.

“Boy, you put your foot on my coffee table, Imma whack you with a spoon!” Missouri snapped.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“But you were thinkin’ about it.”

Melissa frowned at the doorway. “Are you sure you don’t know where John is?”

“I’m very sure.” Missouri turned to Melissa and did a double take. “Oh, Melissa Jo. How are you here, child?”

The female hunter scowled. “Don’t call me that. I’m not a child.”

“Mel,” Sam said warningly. She glared at him and he turned back to Missouri. “So, our dad. When did you first meet him?”

“He came for a reading a few days after the fire,” Missouri said. “I just told him what was really out there in the dark. I guess you could say… I drew back the curtains for him.”

“What about the fire?” Dean pressed. “Do you know about what killed our mom?”

“A little. Your daddy took me to your house. He was hopin’ I could sense the echoes, the fingerprints of this thing.”

Sam leaned forward. “And could you?”

“I don’t…” the psychic trailed off, shaking her head.

“What was it?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Oh, but it was evil. So…you think somethin’ is back in that house?”

Sam nodded. “Definitely.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“I haven’t been back inside, but I’ve been keepin’ an eye on the place, and it’s been quiet. No sudden deaths, no freak accidents. Why is it actin’ up now?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “But Dad going missing and Jessica dying and now this house all happening at once— it just feels like…”

“Like something’s starting,” Melissa finished darkly.

Dean huffed. “That’s a comforting thought.”

* * *

Jenny answered the door and Melissa could see that she was visibly distressed. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Jenny. This is our friend, Missouri.”

“If it’s not too much trouble, we were hoping to show her the old house,” Dean said. “You know, for old time’s sake.”

“You know, this isn’t a good time. I’m kind of busy.” She started to close the door.

“Listen, Jenny, it’s important,” Dean tried. Missouri smacked him on the back of the head. “Ow!”

“Give the poor girl a break, can’t you see she’s upset?” she chided. Then, to Jenny, “Forgive this boy, he means well, he’s just not the sharpest tool in the shed, but hear me out.”

Jenny frowned. “About what?”

“About this house.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think you know what I’m talking about,” Missouri said. “You think there’s something in this house, something that wants to hurt your family. Am I mistaken?”

The woman studied them. “Who are you?”

Melissa moved to the front of the group. “We’re people who can help. Whatever is here, we’re the ones who can stop it from hurting anybody else.”

“But you’re gonna have to trust us, just a little,” Missouri added. Jenny looked unsure, but let them into the house.

Missouri led Melissa and the boys to Sari’s bedroom. “If there’s a dark energy around here, this room should be the center of it.”

“Why?” Sam asked.

Melissa tensed as she looked around the room. “This had to be your nursery. Can’t you feel it? This is where it all happened.”

Dean pulled out his EMF meter. He nudged Sam and showed him that the EMF was beeping frantically.

“I don’t know if you boys should be disappointed or relieved, but this ain’t the thing that took your mom,” Missouri reported.

Sam inhaled sharply. “Wait, are you sure? How do you know?”

“It isn’t the same energy I felt the last time I was here. It’s somethin’ different.”

“What is it?”

“Not it.” Missouri opened the closet doors. “Them. There’s more than one spirit in this place.”

“What are they doing here?” Dean questioned.

“They’re here because of what happened to your family. You see, all those years ago, real evil came to you. It walked this house. That kind of evil leaves wounds. And sometimes, wounds get infected.”

Sam furrowed his eyebrows. “I don’t understand.”

“I do,” Melissa said. “The echo from what happened that night, the wound, it would make this place a magnet for paranormal energy.”

Missouri nodded. “It’s attracted a poltergeist. A nasty one. And it won’t rest until Jenny and her babies are dead.”

“You said there was more than one spirit,” Sam reminded her.

“There is. I just can’t quite make out the second one.”

“Well, one thing’s for damn sure, nobody’s dyin’ in this house ever again,” Dean said. “So whatever is here, how do we stop it?”

* * *

Back at Missouri’s house. Dean, Sam, Melissa, and Missouri sat around a table covered in different herbs and roots.

“So, what is all this stuff, anyway?” Dean asked.

“Angelica Root, Van Van oil, crossroad dirt, a few other odds and ends.”

“Yeah? What are we supposed to do with it?”

“We’re gonna put them inside the walls in the north, south, east, west corners on each floor of the house,” Missouri explained.

Melissa frowned at the materials. “So like a hex bag, but for protection. A protection bag.”

Sam elbowed her. “And this’ll destroy the spirits?”

“It should,” the psychic confirmed. “It should purify the house completely. You two can take the north and east corners, Melissa and I will do the south and west. But we work fast. Once the spirits realize what we’re up to, things are gonna get bad.”

Once they finished making the bags, they returned to the old house and Missouri convinced Jenny to take the kids and leave for a while.

Sam went upstairs and Dean took the kitchen. Melissa went with Missouri to the basement to place her own bag and stand guard while the placed hers. Both women jumped at the sound of something moving. Melissa responded quicker, placing herself in between the psychic and the table that the poltergeist saw fit to use as a weapon. The hunter extended her hand towards the table and the furniture was knocked off its course, crashing harmlessly against the wall.

Missouri blinked, looking from the table to the woman in front of her. “How—?”

Melissa took a deep breath. “You’re welcome.”

“ _Sam!_ ” They hear Dean shout, Melissa sprints up to the second floor where Dean was holding an injured Sam.

Later that night, after Jenny had returned and Missouri made Dean clean up the kitchen, the three hunters were sitting in the car outside the house.]

“All right, so, tell me again, what are we still doing here?” Dean asked Sam.

“I don’t know. I just…” Sam struggled for the words. “I still have a bad feeling.”

“Why? Missouri did her whole Zelda Rubenstein thing, the house should be clean, it should be over.”

“Yeah, well, probably. But I just wanna make sure, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, problem is I could be sleeping in a bed right now.” Dead slid down in his seat and closed his eyes.”

Sam looked back at Melissa, who shook her head and returned her attention to at the house to see Jenny screaming through her window. “Guys!”

“Come on, Dean!” Sam threw the door open. They rushed out of the car and ran towards the house.

“You two grab the kids,” Dean ordered, “I’ll get Jenny,”

Melissa raced up to stairs and grabbed Ritchie from his crib while and Sam went to Sari’s bedroom, where she was screaming for help. The flaming figure stood in the middle of her room. Sam went to Sari’s bed and picked her up. “Don’t look!” he told the girl, carrying her out of the room and down the stairs to meet Melissa in the kitchen. He put Sari down.

“Mel—” Before he could finish his sentence, an invisible force made Sam fall to the floor. He slid backwards into another room, crashing into a table. Sari screamed and Melissa pulled her outside with Ritchie. They rushed over to Dean and Jenny.

“Where’s Sam?” Dean demanded.

Sari was crying. “He’s inside. Something’s got him.”

Panicked, Dean looked at the front door. It slammed shut on its own.

“Focus, Dean,” Melissa told him handing the toddler to his mother. “Axe and guns.”

Dean opened the trunk of the Impala and grabbed two rifles and an ax. Melissa caught one of the rifles when Dean tossed it to her. He rushed to the front door and began chopping away at it. She followed him into the house through the hole he made. They walked through the house, looking for Sam.

Sam was pinned against the wall, the blazing figure standing before him. Melissa immediately dropped her rifle and tried to pry the younger brother away from the wall. Dean raised his gun and pointed it at the figure

“No, don’t! Don’t!” Sam shouted.

“What, why?”

“Because I know who it is. I can see her now.”

The fire faded. Instead, standing in front of them was Mary Winchester, exactly as she was the night she died. Dean’s expression softened. Melissa made a soft choking sound. Dean both lowered his gun slowly.

“Mom?” he whispered.

Mary smiled and stepped closer to him. “Dean.” She moved away from him and went to Sam. “Sam.” Her smile faded. “I’m sorry.”

“F-For what?” Sam choked.

She looked at him sadly but didn’t respond. She walked away from them and looked up at the ceiling. “You get out of my house. And let go of my son.” With the order, Mary’s ghost burst into flames. When she was entirely engulfed, the fire reached the ceiling and disappeared. The force holding Sam to the wall was released. He walked over to Dean, and the two of them looked at each other, stunned.

Sam looked back at Melissa, who was staring blankly at the spot where Mary’s ghost had been moments before. “Now it’s over.”

* * *

The next morning, Jenny gave Dean a box of old photos she had found in the basement and they drove Missouri, who had returned to double check the house, home. Dean was in the car waiting, Sam and Melissa had both gone inside with the psychic to say goodbye.

“Well, there are no spirits there anymore, this time for sure,” Missouri assured them.

“Not even my mom?” Sam asked.

Missouri shook her head. “No.”

“What happened?”

“Mary’s spirit and the poltergeist’s energy would’ve canceled each other out,” Melissa explained. “Your mom destroyed herself going after the thing.”

“Why would she do something like that?”

“Well, to protect her boys, of course.” Sam nodded, with tears in his eyes. Missouri went to put her hand on his shoulder, but she stopped herself. “Sam, I’m sorry.”

Sam looked at her. “For what?”

“You sensed it was here, didn’t you? Even when I couldn’t.”

“What’s happening to me?”

Missouri looked away. “I know I should have all the answers, but I don’t know.”

Sam sighed and turned to Melissa. “Dean’s going to get impatient. We should go.”

“I’ll be right out,” she told him.

“Don’t you boys be strangers,” Missouri called after him as he left.

Melissa waited until she’s sure Sam is in the car before turning to face the psychic.

“You never answered my question,” Missouri said.

“You don’t get an answer,” Melissa snapped.

“MJ, dear—”

“Don’t call me that!” she hissed. “You have no right to call me that. Not while you were lying to their faces. They’ve been worried sick and that… that abusive _stain_ on humanity is hiding from them. You’re hiding him from them. I know he’s here.”

Missouri frowned. “I’m not the only one keeping secrets from those boys.”

Melissa scowled and looked away. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“ _How?_ I’m keeping mine out of self-preservation! How do you think Dean would react to my secret as opposed to yours?”

“And yet you call John Winchester a ‘stain on humanity.’” Missouri reminded her.

Melissa glared at the older woman. “You’re psychic. You can see exactly what I know about John Winchester and exactly how accurate that is.”

“You’ve never met him.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve heard enough from people who have.”

“You don’t want to form your own opinion?”

“I have formed my own opinion from seeing what he’s done to the people I care about,” Melissa said, fiercely. “No amount of sob stories about the death of his wife or crying over his decision to isolate his children who are _desperately searching for him_ is going to change my mind!” She started to raise her voice. “I know you can hear me, John Winchester! If you deserved my sympathy, you wouldn’t be hiding from me or your sons!”

John appeared in a doorway looking ragged and tearful. “I don’t want to hide. You have no idea how much I wanna see ‘em. But I can’t. Not yet. Not until I know the truth.”

Melissa glared at him. “The truth shouldn’t matter. Sam is your _son_. If you really gave a crap, you’d stand by him _and Dean_ no matter what.” She turned on her heel and stormed out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So because Amy's going through a bit of a rough patch right now, I'll be taking over the fic. I can't update regularly, but I promise the story would be abandoned. We've got too many plans for Melissa.


	11. Faith Healer Part 1

“You coming?” Dean asked.

Melissa shook her head. “I can’t keep my head in the game. I’d just be a liability.”

Sam looked at her, worriedly. “Mel…”

“Go, Sam. I’m fine.”

Melissa managed to keep the fake smile on her face until the boys were out of her line of sight. She sighed and laid her head in her hands. _I’m fine._ She had to repeat the lie every time Sam asked. He asked every time she didn’t go in, guns blazing.  She hadn’t participated in a hunt beyond research since the Vanir.

 _That damn hunt_ , Melissa clutched her locket, _that damn deity._ With Sam so insistent that they be looking for John and Dean so willing to be a mindless soldier, Melissa had been on the edge of panic. This was _not_ what she wanted. This was almost _worse_ than what she ran from. She had been _so close_ to calling Loki, asking him to send her home.

Melissa snorted as the lyrics from an old cover her cousin had played for her once filtered into her mind. _There’s no running from this life,_ she reminded herself. _You should know that by now._

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat. Sam’s expression from when she had chosen to go with Dean to Burkitsville instead of following him to California still haunted her. She had given him an explanation eventually, but it was weak. How was she supposed to make him understand how _badly_ a confrontation between her and John Winchester would end if she wasn’t careful?

Not that going with Dean had been much better in the end. She should’ve dragged Dean out of that town the minute they realized it was pagan. She should’ve known sooner that it was the damn Vanir. Instead, they had ended up tied to a freaking tree and she couldn’t even—

Melissa took a deep breath to steady herself, remembering the disappointment in her gut when she had practically screamed her prayers to Loki and they had gotten Sam as a rescue party instead.

She let go of the locket. _He’s protecting me the only way he knows how,_ she tried to convince herself. _That should be enough._

_The Winchesters should be enough._

And that was when Sam came back into view, Dean unconscious in his arms.

* * *

“What’re you doing?”

Sam had left the room to talk to the police. Dean, paler than Death and looking like shit, was watching TV. Melissa was sitting in her chair, her eyes shut tight. “Praying,” she responded.

“You’re religious?” Dean couldn’t keep the surprise out of his weak voice.

“Hardly.”

“Then who’re you praying to? Who’re you expecting to answer?”

She huffed out a disappointed breath and opened her eyes. “No one, apparently.”

Sam came back in and Dean returned his attention to the TV. “Have you ever actually watched daytime TV? It’s terrible.”

Sam shook his head and exhaled sharply. “I talked to your doctor.”

“That fabric softener teddy bear. Oh, I’m gonna hunt that little bitch down.”

“Dean.”

Dean sighed and turned the TV off. “Right, well, it looks like you’re gonna leave town without me.”

“What are you talking about? We’re not gonna leave you here.”

“Hey, you better take care of that car or I swear I’ll haunt your ass.”

“That’s not funny, Dean,” Melissa snapped.

Dean’s glare was weak. “It’s a dangerous gig; I drew the short straw. That’s it. End of story.”

“Shut up. There are options—”

“What options?” he demanded. “I’m gonna die and you can’t stop it. No one’s listening, Melissa.”

She ground her teeth together. “Someone’s always listening.” She got out of the chair and stormed towards the door.

"You can stop pretending that you're upset. We don't like each other, remember?"

Melissa paused in the doorway. "You’re making it out of this intact, Winchester, even if it means I have to beat the Reaper that comes for your soul."

The ride back to the motel was silent. Sam immediately opened the laptop and started researching. Melissa collapsed face first on the bed.

The next few days were dedicated to researching more and more desperate theories. On the third day, Sam was jerked into consciousness by the sound of the door slamming. Melissa, fully dressed and thoroughly pissed, chucked her phone angrily across the room.

“No help?” Sam guessed.

“The cousins are in the middle of a hunt. Nothing they have access to right now is going to be quick enough.”

“What about your brother?”

“He’s been ignoring me for years, I don’t know why I thought this time would be different.” She tossed her bag onto the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

Sam glanced at the closed door before pulling out his phone and dialing John’s number. He wasn’t surprised when it went to voicemail. “ _This is John Winchester. I can’t be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son, Dean. 866-907-3235. He can help._ ”

He swallowed and fought back tears to leave a message. “Hey Dad, it’s Sam. Uh, you probably won’t even get this, but… it’s Dean. He’s sick and the doctor’s say there’s nothing they can do. But they don’t know the things we know, right? So, don’t worry, cause I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get him better. Alright… just wanted you to know.” He hung up, tossed the phone back on the bed, and pressed the heels on his hands against his eyes.

When he looked back up, Melissa was staring at him intently. “What?”

“There’s…” She bit her lip, absently fingering her locket. “There may be another way to go about this. But it’s…”

“It’s what?”

“It could be dangerous, really dangerous, and I don’t—”

There was a knock on the door. Both hunters jumped and Sam went to answer. He opened the door to find Dean leaning against the frame, looking as horrible as he did in the hospital.

Sam blinked in surprise. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I checked myself out,” Dean shrugged.

“Are you crazy?”

Melissa’s phone started ringing. She groaned and snatched it off the floor. She shot Dean an angry glare and she shoved past him out into the hall to answer.

Dean moved into the room, supporting himself on whatever he could reach. “I’m not gonna die in a hospital where the nurses aren’t even hot.”

“You know, this whole I-laugh-in-the-face-of-death thing? It’s crap. I can see right through it.”

“Yeah, whatever, dude. Have either of you even slept? You look worse than me.”

Sam helped him into a chair. “We’ve been scouring the Internet for three days, calling every contact in Dad’s journal.”

“For what?” Dean asked.

“For a way to help you.”

“You’re not gonna let me die in peace, are you?”

Sam fixed him with a look. “I’m not gonna let you die, period.”

Melissa poked her head back in the room. “That was one of John’s contacts, gave me the address of that specialist. Pack your shit, we’re going to Nebraska.”

* * *

The sign on the large white circus tent read: _The Church of Roy LeGrange. Faith Healer. Witness the Miracle_. Dean was not happy about it. He shoved Sam away when he tried to help him out of the car. “Man, you are a lying bastard. Thought you said we were going to see a doctor.”

“I believe we said a specialist,” Sam defended. “Look, Dean, this guy’s supposed to be the real deal.”

Dean scoffed and turned to Melissa. “This is a joke right?”

She didn’t respond.

They walked past a man arguing with a cop. “I have a right to protest. This man is a fraud. And he’s milking all these people out of their hard-earned money.”

“Sir, this is a place of worship. Let’s go. Move it,” said the sheriff.

“I take it he’s not part of the flock,” Dean commented. “Come on, guys, a faith healer?”

“Maybe it’s time to have a little faith, Dean.”

“You know what I’ve got faith in? Reality. Knowing what’s really going on.”

“How can you be a skeptic with the things we see every day?” Sam asked.

Both brothers looked at Melissa for back up. She shifted uncomfortably. No faith healer she’d ever seen had been ‘the real deal.’ There had always been something working behind the scenes. But Dean was _hurt_ and she _couldn’t do anything about it_. Whatever LeGrange was using was working, and that’s all she cared about.

“We know evil is out there,” she said, carefully avoiding the question of LeGrange’s validity, “but good is out there too.”

Dean shook his head. “I’ve seen what evil does to good people.”

“Maybe God works in mysterious ways,” a young woman offered.

“Maybe he does.” He smiled at the woman and offered her his hand. “I’m Dean. This is Sam and Melissa.”

She took his hand. “Layla. So if you’re not a believer, then why are you here?”

“Well apparently, these two believe enough for the three of us.”

An older woman approached and put her arm around Layla. “Come on, it’s about to start.”

The trio followed the two women into the tent, which was full of rows upon rows of people looking for a seat. A small state at the front has a lectern with candles. Dean looked around. “Yeah. Peace, love, and trust all over,” he said, nodding to a security camera in the back corner.

The moment they walked into the tent, Melissa felt her stomach roll. Something wasn’t right. There was a presence in the test. A presence that seemed… almost familiar, but not quite. She mentally cursed, four years of hiding hadn’t done her any good. Sam dragged them to sit near the front. The closer they got to the stage, the more nauseous Melissa felt. She jumped when LeGrange started speaking, not having noticed him take the stage.

“Each morning, my wife, Sue Ann, reads me the news. Never seems good, does it? Seems like there’s always someone committing some immoral, unspeakable act. But, I say to you, God is watching.”

Melissa did her best not to laugh out loud, and only just succeeded in suppressing a snort.

“God rewards the good, and He punishes the corrupt. It is the Lord who does the healing here, friends. The Lord who guides me in choosing who to heal by helping me see into people’s hearts.”

“Yeah, and into their wallets,” Dean muttered to Sam.

“You think so, young man?”

The crowd immediately fell silent. Dean frowned. “Sorry.”

“No, no. Don’t be. Just watch what you say around a blind man, we’ve got real sharp ears.” The crowd laughed. “What’s your name, son?”

Dean cleared his throat. “Dean.”

“Dean,” Roy repeated. “I want you to come up here with me.”

“No, it’s ok.”

Sam stared at his brother. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“You’ve come here to be healed, haven’t ya?”

“Well, yeah, but uh, maybe you should just pick someone else.”

LeGrange smiled. “Oh, no. I didn’t pick you, Dean, the Lord did.”

“Dean, just go,” Melissa hissed through her teeth. If something went wrong, they could go with her plan B, but if this man could somehow fix Dean’s heart…

The hunter reluctantly stood and moved up to the stage.

“You ready?” LeGrange asked.

“Look, no disrespect, but I’m not exactly a believer.”

“You will be, son. You will be.” He turned to the crowd. “Pray with me friends.”

LeGrange lifted his hands to the air, then placed one on Dean’s shoulder before moving it to the side of his head. Melissa watched closely, looking for some sign of what could be doing the healing. Dean sank to his knees and the wrong feeling tripled in intensity. When Dean’s eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed to the stage, the entire tent cheered. Both Sam and Melissa raced to his side.

“Dean!” Sam grabbed the front of Dean’s hoodie. His eyes flew open and he gasped for air. “Say something!”

If Dean spoke, Melissa didn’t notice. She was staring in horror at the man in a suit behind LeGrange.

The man vanished.

Now she knew what they were dealing with.

 _Angels_.

* * *

“So you really feel okay?” Sam pressed.

“I feel fine, Sam,” Dean snapped.

The doctor came back into the room with the paperwork. “Well, according to all your tests, there’s nothing wrong with you heart. No sign there ever was Not that a man your age should be having heart trouble. Still, it’s strange, but it does happen.”

“What do you mean, strange?” Dean asked.

“Well, just yesterday, a guy like you, twenty-seven, athletic. Out of nowhere, heart attack.”

“Thanks, doc.”

“No problem.” The doctor left.

Dean looked at Sam. “That’s odd.”

“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Sam said. “People hearts give out all the time, man.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Look, Dean, do we really have to look this one in the mouth? Why can’t we just be thankful that the guy saved your life and move on?”

Dean stood. “Because I can’t shake this feeling, that’s why.”

“What feeling?”

“When I was healed, I just… I felt wrong. I felt cold. And for a second, I saw someone. This old man. I’m telling you, Sam, it was a spirit.”

“If there was something there, Dean, I think I would’ve seen it too. I’ve been seeing an awful lot of things lately.”

“Well, excuse me, psychic wonder. But you’re just gonna need a little faith on this one. I’ve been hunting long enough to trust a feeling like this. Besides, Melissa must’ve seen it too. Nothing else would’ve freaked her out this much.”

Sam snorted. “Oh, because you and Mel are such good friends.”

“You saw the look on her face when she bolted, Sam. Aside from almost getting sacrificed to the Vanir, when was the last time you saw her looking that spooked?”

Sam looked down and sighed. “Yeah, alright. So what do you wanna do?”

“I want you to go check out the heart attack guy. I’m gonna visit the reverend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished this and had to post because I felt bad about going AWOL. The reformatting is going to happen when I post the next chapter. Everything will be condensed so that each chapter is one episode. That means that chapter 6 will start with this update and continue with part two, just a heads up.
> 
> I'm so sorry for any confusion XP
> 
> -Totes

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://dreamhunter-trash.tumblr.com/)!


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